


Go on. Do your duty.

by LAntoniou



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Character Death, Crofter's Village, Ending Fix, Endings, Gen, Multiple Endings, WTF D&D, what the hell was season 5
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-18
Updated: 2015-07-27
Packaged: 2018-04-05 01:05:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 17
Words: 39,342
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4159767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LAntoniou/pseuds/LAntoniou
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It didn't happen that way. In fact, it could happen so many different ways. Stannis Baratheon deserves better. So does Shireen. So did the watchers and book readers.</p><p>Seventeen different endings. I think I might stop here. I have a couple more ideas, but they are resisting completion, so perhaps they aren't that good.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Show V1: Holdfast

Show V1: Holdfast

 

Each word cracked in the grinding of his teeth. "She. Is. My. Daughter."

The Red Woman persisted. "Great sacrifices..."

"My daughter!" the king snapped. "I will hear no more. Take of mine own blood or _pray harder_. Leave me."

She bowed her head in acknowledgement but not submission, and he turned his head to the table again, each marker betraying the truth to him like a drumbeat before an execution.

_I cannot defeat Renly in the field!_ he'd growled, frustrated and betrayed, always betrayed, even by his own blood. Hundreds, thousands of banners unfurled and snapping in the wind, the salt-sea air crisp and clean against the cloying sweetness of Renly's bravado and that damned peach.

_I will give you a son_ , she'd promised.

Lies. All lies and betrayal. They would die here, trapped between a cowardly retreat and the Boltons laughing and _feasting_ behind the vast walls of Winterfell.

No. There must be a way. There is another answer. He summoned his commanders and captains, listened long past the darkness of night, gave orders. And with barely a bite of the scorched horseflesh that was his royal meal, he didn't even recall closing his eyes, only sitting, for a moment, one of the flayed men in his hands as he considered ice and archers and heavy horse and...

The screaming woke him. It was shrill and terrified and feminine, not the cry of a wounded man or a struggling garon. He jerked to his feet, shaking the table, sending markers tumbling over. Two steps to thrust the tent flaps back and his guard brought pikes up in salute. The glow of a nightfire cast eerie shadows across their helms.

"My sword!" His voice sounded wrong, lost amid the rising wind and the palpable hammer strikes of each heartbeat. "Stop...stop her! At once!" He grasped one guard by the shoulder and hurled him forward. "Stop her, curse you!" But he ran, the blood pounding in his ears, surely not, surely not, it was a dream, a nightmare, a false vision.

Smoke and ire choked him, tearing through his throat.

The ring of worshipers broke open as knights he didn't recall summoning shoved them apart, and in the center, gods, gods, in the center, the fire raged and tied to a stake was a body too small, no, no, my child, my princess, mine own...

He would have run into the flames himself, but it took three knights to hold him back as others stormed in. Struggles exploded as pockets of darkness, shot through with dancing embers and flickers of red and gold light. He could not even understand what was going on, his struggles futile, his howls of anguish drowning out the screams of the Red God's followers as they were thrown bodily upon the pyre until their bulk brought the flames down low enough for two knights to brave the center and release...

Release...

Steam rose from the snow as they laid the unmoving burden down.

"Release me," he rasped, shaking men off him. "Take and hold the Lady Melisandre..." His voice failed. He stared at the pyre, twitching bodies amid the low, smoldering base. Struggles continued in the shadows around the ring, grunts and screams of pain as his guard stamped out any resistance.

The sweet stench of roasted meat and blood fouled the night.

"My king! It was necessary, you know it to be true!"

"Silence her." He did not even look in her direction, but thrust his hand out blindly. One of his squires had brought Lightbringer. Its familiar weight steadied him. He could hear a heavy, dull blow and she spoke no more. Yes. He would kill her now, as he should have in days past...

"Your grace! She lives!"

Barely. Each breath shook her tiny frame, and the only sound she made was faint and high pitched.

_A yellow dog, a mongrel allowed to live, was naught but patchy fur and bones under his hand, it came to him as he gripped a dagger to cut its throat, such a terrible reward for such a loyal creature. Holdfast, he'd heard the stable boys call it, for it would seize upon a scrap of leather or cloth and trail it past them to get them to play tugging games. Cressen tried to speak to him, whispered, "My lord," with such sympathy it would have forced him to bring up bile had there been anything in his stomach. But he did his duty and quickly that_.

He sank to his knees next to her. "Shireen," he tried to say, but it came out in a hoarse whisper.

The greyscale was the only part of her face not burnt. The girl child who survived lived still. So much pain in her short life and all she ever brought him were those blue Baratheon eyes and her shy smile and her desire to please him. Her love.

He was unworthy of love. Always. Eternally.

The king stood and drew the sword. Its faint glow illuminated the blackened and dying girl at his feet, and when he quickly, effortlessly thrust it through her heart, every knight would swear he never even glanced away from the horror of her anguish and ruin.

And when he drew it back, it erupted into flames.

Not the paltry, pale flickers of blue evidenced that night on the beach at Dragonstone as they burned the images of the Seven, but a rich, golden yellow bright as a noon sun racing from guard to tip. A stark, midnight line edged along the fuller, black as old blood, as the stag upon the Baratheon banner.

Mutters and whispers became hails and praise. Ser Godry was on his knees already along with many fellow worshipers.

_Of course_ , the king thought, _of course he was not cast upon the flames himself. It was never those hungriest for blood who suffered..._

The sword felt light in his hand and its warmth ran through his bones now, sweet as mulled wine. His exhaustion, his hunger, that constant, aching cold, they were all gone. And now he knew. With this in his hand, he could reshape this coming battle, he could call the Bastard of Bolton to come forth and slay him as a hero of old...

"Azor Ahai stands before you!" came the voice of the Red Woman, and it was answered by yet another muffled blow.

"Aye." The king nodded. He gestured to Godry, never glancing in her direction. "The Lady Melisandre has seen what she came for. Send her to her god." As he expected, the knight's eyes glittered like cheap paste gems on a dockside whore. How long had he entertained fearsome and bloody fantasies about his priestess? No matter. Men were monsters the world over.

As he was, both monster and the slayer of monsters. He felt a _call_ to return north now, to where the great enemy was. It felt as deep and true as whatever force drew the leviathans to swim majestically past Storm's End and Dragonstone every turn of the seasons. He _would_ take Winterfell _and_ free the Stark girl and at last that bastard boy would realize the Night's Watch was only a small part of what it would take to bring the dawn against the rising dark.

"Do it quickly," he commanded, ignoring her cries, whether in praise or entreaties, he cared not. "Be merciful. She betrayed me and shall die. But she saw true." He ran his hand along Lightbringer's flat, and came away with a faint flicker around each finger that glowed and then sank into him again.

He glanced up and saw the ring of his officers and lords, their awe and pride, their naked greed and hunger for blood and vengeance. Their fear.

"Go on," he growled. He had no time for anything but their obedience. "Do your duty."

He sheathed Lightbringer and darkness rose around him, even as the dull light of the sun began to spread over the horizon.


	2. Book V1 - Of Course

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stannis has the worst luck. But at least Davos and Shireen are safe. Somewhere.

"Stannis! STANNIS!" the cries echoed around him as his arm wove tapestries of splattered bone and ancient cloth and blackened flesh, Lightbringer smashing again and again into the endless sea of dead men...

No, not just men, but women, aye, and even tiny, skeletal bodies with gaunt faces and eyes like black pearls, their shrunken limbs flailing as they tried to get through his battered plate. He had picked up and lost four shields already, broken upon this endless sea of filth, this inhuman wave of what was once human.

_Where were the bloody dragons?_

A wildling woman with braids flying round her head whirled and struck with a staff thick as a sapling, edged with teeth made of broken dragonglass. The blunt force broke bones and skulls well enough, but every chip lost from such a weapon was wasted upon this undead trash. The king ground his teeth in frustration and slammed his armored elbow into the back of an ice-pale neck, then brought his sword up to sever the head. As it flew away, the wildling woman laughed in a joy that was sweet and bloody, and then the king saw her eyes widen.

He whirled, ducked, and the glacier blue creature looked down upon him with glimmering, sapphire eyes. Lightbringer met the Other's jagged bastard sword in a ringing sound that made the melee about them fade away. The strength behind the blow was impossible, the grace the creature used to raise, twist and turn it for another slash was insulting.

_Keep your guard up, Stannis!_ Robert taunted, laughing in the training yard. _How will you ever defend my back in battle if you can't keep your god's damned guard up?_

But he had learned, he had studied, under the arms master and with knights, some of them the best fighters in all the Stormlands. For the day his brother would call upon him to guard his back.

Again and again, he brought the sword up against that icy bastard blade, always on the defense, never getting the chance to attack back. The woman screamed and drove into the creature from one side, and with contemptuous ease, it swept that jagged blade across and through her, splitting her in a ruin of fur and blood and viscera, her weapon fallen beside her.

The king dived for it. He hit the churning mire of death and ice and grasped blindly for that priceless dragonglass.

The Other stepped through the remains of the wildling woman and his sword felt like wildfire and ice together, burning cleanly through the best plate ever made in the Stormlands, and then through the leg beneath.

The king cried out and then clamped his teeth together, the fury and impotence wrenching through every breath as his warm blood pooled and spilled along his leg. He raised his sword to block another effortless swing from the creature, and felt the jarring vibration all through his arm and across his shoulders. He rolled, bellowing in pain, and there, there, his left hand seized upon that staff, he could feel the dragonglass even through the thick leather of his gauntlet. He would have to roll back, over that ruined leg...

A knight tried to shield him, and the king saw his breastplate crumble, three moths crushed and split by that unholy blade. With a roar, he rolled and thrust the staff up in a move Robert would have laughed to see, held in his off hand no less, from a vulnerable position on the ground.

It hit the creature and it shattered into a million pieces, scattered like stars across the summer's evening , the sound a screech into the din of battle, and then silence.

Once the thing was gone, the hordes of grey-skinned wights faltered, suddenly without direction. Horns blew in the distance and up above in the sky... _there_...at last, he would see one of these creatures, these blasted, damned creatures from legend that should have been his to command. He should have brought them to life with one of those damned, wasted sacrifices Melisandre had always been so sure would work. And where was she now, but lost amid the sea of dead things, nothing left of her and her most loyal followers but a ring of scorched ground where she had last been seen.

The king looked up at that scrap of shadow in the sky. Was it actually ridden, as the scouts said, by the Targaryen girl?

_(The one Robert had told him to deal with, the one who slipped away, earning him years of scorn and mockery and that barren island of crags and sorrow.)_

Or could it be true and that bold, brave, stubborn boy was _not_ gotten upon some tavern slut, but on Robert's own fantasy queen of love and beauty, her heart or body or both stolen by a the poet prince?

She would have liked that story. His daughter. Perhaps Davos would tell her. The king had never been good at those fanciful tales of romance and adventure. Real war was never romantic. It was getting your bloody leg half hacked off and bleeding into the ruined remains of your fellows in the muck and dying in the cold, your heroism just another line on the butcher's bill.

The dragon was larger now, circling as it came down in a spiral, in and out of his vision. Fire accompanied it, or heralded it. It seemed to be heading...

"Of course," the king said out loud. "How _fucking_ appropriate." His mouth twisted in a grimace, teeth bared.

 "Go on. Do your duty."

They found Lightbringer amid the field of battle, buried in drifts of ash and bone.


	3. Book v2:  Night Comes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He had been a king. He would be again.

The king remembered hunger.

He wasn't quite sure when he'd eaten last, or felt the slip of snowmelt down his throat. All water had to be gathered from ice and snow, melted over pitiful fires or, more commonly, in smoke tanned skins hung between layers of armor and fur to keep them from freezing. He did not disdain the task, like some of the other nobles in the vast company of the living.

He remembered what it was like to ache with need. That taut, ever-present pressure, the way his guts would cramp. The new ache was sharper. Colder. He opened his eyes and realized he was on his back.

Where was he?

A band of stars glinted overhead, wisps of grey clouds like the mist over the rocks along the shores of Dragonstone. Why was he here?

Ah. The spear through his stomach. It pinned him to the ground like some vile game the abomination Joffrey played with the cats in ...in...

It mattered not.

He was dead, then. There was no sound around him, save the crackles of ice in the trees, the low hum of a distant wind. The battle - there had to be a battle - was over, he had been left among the dead without even the rough mercy of clean sword thrust.

If only Davos had been with him, he would not have been left like this, but Davos was dead, killed by Lord ...Lord Too-Fat, murdered for the sake of those damned traitors. Those...Freys. No, Boltons. All dead now, all dead.

Weren't they? It seemed they were.

He ran his right hand carefully along his hip, searching for his dagger. The scabbard was empty. Perhaps he could grasp the spear itself. he ground his teeth in preparation for the pain and reached for the shaft -

There was no pain.

The king grasped it, pulled up and away from his body. It slid free as though it had been safely nestled in a fine, oiled scabbard and not his entrails. No spurt of blood followed, although he could see the gap in his armor.

It was foolishness, but he felt...rested. Strong, even. No doubt he'd gone mad, frozen his brain out here on a battlefield. But perhaps if he could manage to even sit up, he could attract the attention of some other survivor.

But he rose to his feet with a fluid ease he'd never had before.

 _Mayhap I shall live, then_. He looked around the field to see if he could scavenge a weapon and realized he was completely alone.

The snow was trampled, splattered with blood and viscera, strewn with weapons both whole and shattered. random piles of bones and filth marked the last places where the mass troops of the dead had met their end. But of the men and woman who ...

 Who had he been with?

There was a sword stuck half in the ground. He gripped it, hefted it, but it felt wrong. Too light. It was unpleasant to hold. He cast it aside and walked. He felt sure-footed, even though he didn't quite know where he was going.

 _I have a duty._ That much, he knew. There were...injustices. Imbalance. He hungered all his life to be the right kind of man, to do right by his people, from the highest of nobles to the most insignificant of smallfolk. And what did he get for this? Cast aside. Forgotten. Scorned.

Even his brother...

Brothers? He had two. No, three. No...one. With a half-hand, he was...he was. It would come to him.

He walked on. Crows flapped through the branches, calling, and in their cries he heard reminders. Betrayal. Lies. Promises. Visions. Fire.

The woman. She was fire, she had fire, oh, her warmth was as seductive as her body, and she stole his...his son?

He had no sons. No children. No woman, no guard, no squire, no friend or ally or wife or lover, no one. What use was it to build a just life and lose it like a fool casting dice on the floor of a tavern?

 _I was a king_ , the king remembered.

_I shall be again. It is my right._

The grey stones pulsed with power so much more gratifying than the ever-dancing tendrils of fire. They were cold, steady, implacable. Like he had been, to the amusement of...of...

He stopped. There was a table before him, tall and rough hewed. His gloves seemed cumbersome, so he pulled them off, glancing at the pure, bone white of his skin with only mild curiosity. Under his fingers, the stone felt smooth, inviting. It had a flavor to it, a dankness like water from a pool in a cave. There had been life here, many times. Now, there was only the taste of life, faint and coppery.

He was hungry.

She approached from the darkness behind one of the great stones, and he followed her movement across the snow. She was beautiful. She was terrifying. Her skin was white as the shrouded moon, her hair a shimmering wave of darkness. She seemed familiar, even in her strangeness, something about her was...comforting. Proper.

 _My queen_ , the king thought.

She stopped across the table from him and bowed elegantly, and he felt a moment of ...amusement? To be courtly at this time in this place? But he bowed back to her.

Her pale finger traced a circle upon the stone, and it seemed droplets of ice formed up under her touch to make points, stalagmites like small diamond mountains, the mountains etched upon the table...

The table had been a map, a map of the kingdoms, HIS kingdoms, and he was here, north of the Wall, as the dead came on and on and no one came to fight and they died and died in waves and returned the next night as foes...

How many times had he stared at the table, known every line and ridge, every body of water, every harbor and hill, town and city. It was his by right, but he never got it.

 _This table offered him a crown_.

He gazed at it, whole and glistening. A king must have a crown. To take back those kingdoms, properly this time, with an army that would not desert, or mutiny, without lying, scheming nobles and treacherous allies and stubborn, loyal men who would not let him do what must be done for the sake of his...for...

He took up the ice crown. It solidified in his hands, frost flowing over it, turning the spikes opaque and sharp as knives.

It fit perfectly.

And when he raised his eyes to hers, he could hear them, feel them all through the earth and stone around them. There was no need to speak.

 _Come with me_ , he thought. _And take this land_.

They rose, whether from the deep sleep of the dead or the stillness of the quiescent merely awaiting fresh commands. They rose here and they rose leagues away and he could feel them, sense them, and even knew there were others like him, but they lacked what he had.

His queen gazed upon him with those glittering, sea-blue eyes. She would never leave him. Never betray him. She would stand beside him and raise her icy arms with his and call upon his army to take what was his.

Never taking his eyes from her, he sent out his first command.

 _Go on. Do your duty_.

The dead marched, and the King of Night took his Queen by the arm.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Look, if you are going to make Stannis Baratheon a villain, at least make it suitable to the character. I'd think the Army of the Dead would *love* to have him on board.


	4. Show v2: The Maid of Tarth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Brienne is captured in Wintertown while watching out for that candle, and brought before the man she's vowed to kill. He is not impressed.
> 
> "...How were you intending to fetch Lady Sansa out of Winterfell? Were you planning to charge the main gate and wave your Lannister sword and demand they produce her?"

Two more scouts went missing, the ones tasked to survey Winter Town. They could be delayed by the storm, they could have deserted, but they were Northerners who had joined his march, hill tribesmen. That was why he'd sent them. The Winterfell smallfolk might betray some Southron man to the Boltons, aye, but not two of their own.

But he was running out of _time_. The cold sapped more than his men's strength. It leeched away their stamina and focus and discipline. It worsened the deadly catarrh that seeped through their tents like an evil mist. The Iron Bank's gold couldn't fight against the pernicious dangers of a winter encampment.

"Send four then," the king had commanded. "No. Five. Three more Northerners. Ser Arlan and his man, the one they call the Tracker."

Besieging Winterfell was no simple prospect even in high summer. Troops of foragers were always traveling along the roads and pathways around the king's encampment, and they'd intercepted wagons of foodstuffs and wool, skins and furs bound for the seat of the North. Anything he took from them served his forces and denied theirs. Plus, they gained more information with every man who'd ever gotten past the outer walls. They also found spies and hunters serving the Boltons and captured them when they could. The Red Woman begged for some of them to feed her fires.

The king had grown weary of this mummery. Visions in fire, leeches, king's blood, it was all mad. And worse than the madness was it had all been for naught. What advantages had he gained? The bastard Joffrey was dead, but the bastard Tommen sat the Iron Throne. Robb Stark was dead, and now the Northern lords and their men at arms were scattered and decimated, with Roose Bolton Warden over them and _his_ bastard abomination married to a Stark girl.

Renly was dead. But the vast strength of the Stormlands and the Reach was divided and he was reduced to this freezing, huddled collection of his most loyal men, hired mercenaries and the odd Northerner pack turning up out of the snow with their shaggy garons and hulking fur cloaks.

If Jon Snow had taken his offer, his army would be double the size, and he'd have better intelligence of the surrounding area. Oh, he'd had his mapmakers working with Snow before he marched south, and interrogated the too-noble-for-his-own-good boy as well as he could. But once again, the key to victory was elusive. Burnt and being rebuilt as it was, Winterfell might still withhold a siege almost as well as Storm's End.

"Your grace."

He nodded, not turning to the squire's voice. "What is it?"

"Ser Arlan has returned, your grace. He's brought a prisoner, no two. He says he must speak to you!"

***

She was as monstrous as he recalled. Taller than most men, broad of shoulder. Her summer-straw hair was spiky as a thistle around her plain face.

Her armor, though. It was stunning. It had the look of a master craftsman such as Tobho Mott and it was clearly made for her, not some scavenged man's plate pounded to accommodate her size and shape. Her arms were bound behind her back, with additional rope around her upper arms.

He already had her sword. He held it in his lap, drawn.

"The Maid of Tarth, your grace," Ser Arlan spat. "She took Hob Tracker's hand off and killed Justan and the two Northmen."

The king nodded and looked impassively at her. "It is customary to kneel when surrendering to a king."

"I surrender nothing!" she snapped. "And you are no king!"

"I grow weary of such answers. Ser, help Brienne of Tarth recall her courtesies."

It took one well placed kick to the back of her knee and a mailed fist to the side of her head, but when she was finally down, the king turned the sword and stabbed it through the carpet at his feet into the earth below. The undulating lines of black and red ripples caught the lantern light as if alive, a twisting array of snakes.

"Valyrian steel. I know the history of every major house in Westeros, and Tarth had no Valyrian blade. This one has the look of one given to the bastard Joffrey by Tywin Lannister. The scabbard..." He picked it up. "Golden lion heads with rubies for eyes. You served my brother once. Now it appears you are a Lannister assassin."

"I am no assassin like you," she snarled. "I was in your brother's Kingsguard. I was there the night he was murdered by a shadow wearing your face. You murdered your brother, _King_ Renly, with foul magic!"

The king leaned back in his chair for a moment and gave an exasperated sigh. Ser Arlan took the moment to strike her across the face for her insolence, but when he moved to do it again, the king raised a hand. "Leave us, Ser. See to your man."

"Your grace!"

"When I cannot defend myself against a bound woman, no matter how large and strong, you will know to crown my daughter and bury my remains." He pulled the sword from the earth and sheathed it, then placed it on his war table, giving the knight time to bow and take his leave.

"I did," he said, leaning back again. "He was in open rebellion against me, the rightful king and his elder brother. I would have made him my heir, confirmed him Lord of Storm's End, given him whatever seat he wished among my councilors. You served him knowing my claim to be true. I would have pardoned you, as I did his other followers, but you had vanished. With Lady Stark, it was said. But I see you made cause with the Lannisters instead. Why are you here? To kill Lady Sansa in revenge for her poisoning Joffrey?"

"No!" Her horror seemed unfeigned. Her light blue eyes seemed guileless as any maid's, despite her fearsome scowl and armored bulk. "I'm here to _save_ her! I swore an oath to her mother that I would find her daughters and see them to safety."

"A fine job you are doing then, murdering my scouts while I am trying to besiege Winterfell. You delayed my advance by at least three days. How were you intending to fetch Lady Sansa out of Winterfell? Were you planning to charge the main gate and wave your Lannister sword and demand they produce her?"

Her jaw thrust out in defiance. "I sent her word to summon me if she was in need-"

"Summon you? How?"

She gave him a shake of her head. "I have nothing to say to you, kinslayer."

"As you will. Ser Arlan tells me you have a squire. We shall put the question to him, and see if that serves up any answers. You will have a comfortable place from which to witness." He stood and was not surprised when she sputtered, and then closed her eyes tightly, grinding her teeth in a waste of rage and frustration.

It was a familiar feeling.

"A candle. I sent word...I told her to light a candle in a tower window should she require my help."

"How did you send this word?" His words were sharp, and even though her lips curled in distaste, she answered.

"A man at the village. He...he said the North remembered. He had someone inside Winterfell to pass the message to."

The king went to his table and pulled the map of Winterfell from its place, studying it. "A candle in a window, which you would see through blinding snow, no doubt. I am sure Lady _Bolton_ feels assured you will show up eventually."

"Lady...Bolton?"

"Aye. Sansa of House Stark has been wed and bedded by a creature known throughout the North as a raper, a skinner of peasant girls. Roose Bolton's natural son, Ramsey. They say her cries made the very stone weep. Not that you heard them, as you watched for that _candle_." He turned the map to her. "Which tower? This one? Or this?"

Her head was lowered, and a furious red colored her face and neck. "How...how do you know this?" she almost whispered, her voice hoarse.

"Because I use _spies_ ," the king snapped. "Because I am not a _hero_ , hoping to rescue the maiden from a wicked lord in a black cape. Because I spent _days_ getting her bastard brother to tell me everything he remembered about the keep and its weaknesses and strengths, and until someone killed my scouts in Wintertown, I had thought myself ready to march!" He pointed to the map again. "This tower, the Lord Commander said was broken, unused. Is that the one?"

She looked up and studied the map. When she nodded, he tossed it back onto the table. "It is unlikely they allow her to wander her own home. She would know all the secret places, the bolt holes. Lord Snow was sure there were no tunnels leading beyond the walls, but he did give me a map of the crypts. She could lead them on a merry chase indeed, were she able to hide."

He sighed, ran a hand over his head in exasperation. Were the Boltons aware there was someone outside their walls trying to send messages within? They knew he was near, there was no way _all_ of their spies and servants had been caught or killed.

"You've been watching them. How many men do they send outside the walls every day?"

"Not...not many. Hunters, mostly. I saw Littlefinger leave, he took guards wearing the Arryn falcon. The walls are manned...perhaps twenty guards...."

"Be _precise_. Twenty guards along the walls you could see?"

He was relentless, she was begrudging. There was no reason for her resistance; if she wanted the girl free, surely she could see an army would be more effective than her nonsense about candles and smallfolk. The Boltons _skinned_ people. The North might indeed remember the Starks. But a flayed body was a potent memory as well.

When he decided there was nothing left she could give him, he studied her. She was still flushed, and her bruised face looked even darker in the lamplight. His questioning had taken some of the wind from her, but not all. She still seethed.

"I sent my Hand to treat with your father. He only agreed to meet in the dark of night, and denied my right to the throne after that humiliating gesture. Tarth is no friend of mine in any generation it seems. Understand, you are a dead woman. The only question remaining is whether you'll lose your head or go to the flames."

It didn't change her dour countenance. She spat in his direction. "Coward!"

"If such a belief gives you comfort, by all means cling to it."

"Meet me in combat, if you have the mettle!"

The king folded his arms and frowned. "I once held the Evenstar in some regard. It was said he was a doughty warrior, a just lord to his folk. It seems a shame he did not train up his daughter in the laws of Westeros or teach her that war is more than armored brutes engaging in tourney competition. Should I waste my time crossing swords with you, and should you defeat me, how would Lady Bolton be rescued and Winterfell reclaimed? Do you believe my lords and commanders would see you skewer me and then follow _your_ commands after that? More likely they'd butcher you before pulling up their tent pegs and scattering home. The sellswords would also depart, since they would no longer have a guarantee of pay."

When she ground her teeth, the king nodded. "I shall not oblige your challenge. The Boltons have a greater claim on that honor and I intend to allow them to try. But you will be dead before we march." He picked up her sword again and examined it. "Beautiful craftsmanship, although needlessly gaudy. How did you get this? Did you slay the Kingslayer? I have not heard word of his whereabouts in some time."

"He...I." She fell silent and he looked at her. Her head was lowered and she looked suddenly forlorn. She raised her eyes back and he could see them glitter. "I will tell you if you free my squire. He has done nothing. He...he is harmless and has not sworn any oaths against you."

"Make it brief."

"Jaime...Ser Jaime gave it to me. He said...he was supposed to be traded for the Stark daughters. I accompanied him to King's Landing, but Sansa was already married to the Imp. He...he gave it to me, to help fulfill my oath to Lady Catelyn."

She must have realized how unbelievable the tale sounded, for her face became deep red, and she shifted uncomfortably under his gaze.

"An oath you would further endanger by engaging in combat with a king before his army. I am not impressed by your oaths. Still, your squire will be spared, if he bends the knee and swears fealty to me. If he resists, I'll have his head."

"I'll speak to him...and..." she shut her eyes tightly again. "I...I ask for your mercy."

That surprised him. "Pray continue."

"Let me fight in the coming battle. I'll...I'll follow your commands. I will go where the fighting is thickest, first over the walls or through a gate, anything you wish. Let me die fulfilling my oath."

Every word cost her.

"And I should trust that you won't run this handsome blade through my back in the chaos of a battlefield? Or perhaps you were planning to wait until I succeeded and attack me on my way to delivering Lady Bolton to her brother at the Wall?"

"I will not. I swear..."

The king gestured abruptly, silencing her. "There is only one thing you could _possibly_ swear that will put you under my command."

That made her head collapse completely, her chin touching her breastplate. "Unbind me, your grace."

It would have been needlessly showy and awkward to see the ostentatious sword, and the king was weary of such displays. His dagger worked just fine. He handed the Lannister sword to her and stood waiting. She could have leapt up and unsheathed it. Lightbringer was several feet away on its stand. He could have been cut in two before he drew another breath.

But she remained on her knees and gripped the scabbard tightly in her giant, calloused hands.

 _Noble heroes_ , the king thought with scorn. _I should take her to the Wall if she survives, and inflict her upon the Lord Commander_.

She laid the sword at his feet.

He picked it up. "Brienne of Tarth, do you swear fealty to me as the _rightful_ King of the Andals and First Men, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms?"

"I. Do. So. Swear."

She released each word like a man pulling arrows from his body.

The king nodded. "I accept your obedience and fealty. You _may_ fight in the coming battle. But your _new_ oath does not outweigh your recent actions that cost me men and time. This sword is mine. It is needlessly ornamented. The scabbard will be broken down and recompense offered to Ser Arlan for his man, and to any kin of the Northmen you killed. And should you survive the battle, I am giving you to the Starks."

"What?" Honest shock finally unclenched that tight jaw.

" _Your grace_ ," he prompted.

"I...I don't understand, your grace."

"I have no interest in attracting more women to my army. The North, however, does have their...traditions." He ground his own teeth recalling that blasted Mormont girl. "If Lady Sansa survives, she will require women about her in her travels north. Once at the Wall, you may attend upon the Lord Commander, who though not a Stark by name..." The king sighed. "Is surely one in his manner. I daresay he will find _some_ use for you." He gestured, and her armor creaked as she rose.

The king found a worn and scraped scrap of parchment on his table and wrote some brief lines.

"One of my guards will accompany you to see to this squire of yours. If he bends the knee, I will free him or find a use for him. You shall be taken to Ser Bryont. I will inform him I wish you placed in the vanguard under his command; he will see you are given a sword from the armory. Try to get some rest, and eat heartily before dawn. We break camp and march tomorrow."

She said nothing and he turned to hand her the note. She was frowning, her hands in fists, looking down at her feet.

"What is it?" he snapped.

Her head came up and her naked expression was rather like one of the carved monsters gracing the ramparts of Dragonstone. Yet, her voice was slightly softer. "I...thank you, your grace. For the opportunity to keep my oath."

"Your thanks are not necessary. Only your obedience."

"Please. You must understand...your brother..."

He felt his lips curl back, and slammed his fist down on the table. "My _brother_. You served him knowing he had no claim to the throne, and aye, you were not alone. But many of those knights and lords followed him for what gain they would attain once he took the throne that was mine by right. Once he was dead, they fled or flocked to my side like swine rooting for acorns. But you served him for _love_ , did you not? You served him thinking he was a good lord, like some knight from a children's tale. His absurd _Rainbow Guard_ , holding tourneys while marching, his farcical marriage to the Tyrell girl, it was all mummery and pretense."

"He was a good man!"

" _Doing the wrong thing_. It seems you have an attraction to doing the wrong things for what you believe to be good reasons. It is not a bad thing, in a well born maiden, to believe in such nonsense. But you are here armored as a knight; now _act like one_. Put aside your childish dream of a handsome king and endless garlands of tourney roses. If you die at the walls of Winterfell or survive to see Lady Sansa free, it will be in fealty to _me_. I am no hero out of songs. But I will take the North back from the Boltons and their foul allies, and spike their heads. And then I shall see to the real threat to Westeros. If you betray me, I will destroy you. But you have a chance here to serve your realm and your king."

She looked about to say something, but pressed her lips closed so tightly a bead of blood trickled down her chin. He handed her the parchment.

"Go on," he urged, waving a dismissive hand in her direction. "Do your duty."

He'd already turned back to the table when her voice startled him. She had stopped at the tent flaps, and was standing there, her hand reaching for the scabbard she no longer bore. She stood, so unnaturally tall and bulky in that armor, and then bowed, stiffly, and just barely deep enough to make it more than a nod. "Your grace."

The king gave a slight snort and waved her off.

 _Heroes_.

But the corner of his mouth curled up just slightly at the thought of delivering her to Lord Snow. She had to be a head taller than he was, at least. They could prate noble oaths to each other all day.

But first, he had to take Winterfell.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> How could anyone believe that Stannis, an experienced battle commander, would not have spies and scouts all through the area around Winterfell? They'd be looking for troop and guard movements, trying to intercept deliveries of supplies, and looking for Bolton spies. 
> 
> \---------  
> Quote from the book: “To fight Lord Stannis we would first need to find him,” Roose Ryswell pointed out. “Our scouts go out the Hunter’s Gate, but of late, none of them return.”  
> \---------
> 
> NONE RETURN
> 
> And the "light a candle" idea was surely one of the dumbest things Brianne fell for in all of her story. No one came out looking good in this lazy writing. 
> 
> I can believe that Brienne would die before serving or acknowledging Stannis as her king. I wrote that version first, but then thought of how she acted with Jaime. Maybe she could find it in her to grind her teeth and make a new oath to try and salvage something out of the HUGE collection of failures she was amassing. The show even ADDED one by having her come across Arya and lose her as well. And if she did survive, I could see Stannis tossing her at Jon Snow just for the mean-spirited jest.


	5. Book v3: Ironborn, Iron-Forged

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Who better to send against the returned Victarion Greyjoy than the man who defeated him the last time?
> 
> Stannis Baratheon drank salt water by choice.

This battered war galley was a far cry from his tri-decked flagship, the _Fury_. But the _Fury_ was lost, engulfed in wildfire along with her oarmaster, Maric Seaworth. The king saw her break apart on the Blackwater and called for the landing anyway, not even knowing whether his own Hand survived.

At least now, he knew where the blasted man was. He could see his ship in the battle formation. Lord Admiral Seaworth had renamed his galley the _Princess Shireen._

This rag-tag fleet, an insult to the memory of the splendid fleet he'd raised for the Greyjoy rebellion was a patchwork of captured and hastily re-rigged ships of every sort, crewed with wildlings, shore folk, men of the Watch who'd been aboard any kind of boat before and a few Stormlanders who'd somehow survived along with their king. The king stood upon the best of them, _Proudwing_. It had been taken from Ironborn, as had many of their other war-rigged vessels were. He'd muttered the name while looking at it, shaking his head in disbelief. The shipwright next to him thought it had been a command.

It seemed foolish to try and change it once the name had been hastily painted on.

They put the previous crews for all of their captured fleet to the sword. There was no way to keep prisoners and no time for trials.

Victarion Greyjoy certainly had the same custom. The Kraken reaved these waters along the coast, coming out of the Shivering Sea with a monstrous fleet of vessels from all over the world. Stories about how he wound up on this side of Westeros were as varied as his ships.

_He had met the Dragon Queen and was fighting for her, at her command or for her honor or even to woo her._

_He had brought some legendary horn or drum or amulet to control dragons, and would soon send them to reave inland as well._

_He had made some dark bargain with a fire God who provided him with sorcerers and death magic._

The king ground his teeth against the salt wind whenever he thought of that tale. Had Melisandre sought the Kraken out to gull _him_ with mystical tales of being a legendary warrior? It would be comforting to think he was not the only one to fall prey to such fantasies. It would be horrifying to think that Victarion Greyjoy, of all men alive, could be the Azor Ahai. But perhaps he would be more willing to engage in the disgusting, unspeakable sorts of sacrifice the Red Woman demanded. Certainly he had some sort of great fortune. He had sailed forth on some mission to the Free Cities and returned with more ships than he had when he left. Then he drowned his own brother, Euron, who had taken the Seastone Chair, and taken his mighty flagship, the _Silence_ , for his own.

How one might serve both a god of fire and one of the sea was a mystery, but the king had suffered enough mortal insults from gods and their representatives. No more. He would trust in two things only; his judgement and his Hand.

With or without the help of his gods, Victarion Greyjoy was threatening one of the only ways for troops to move north of the wall and refugees to escape. Hardhome and Eastwatch filled with fleeing wildlings and wounded soldiers, then were besieged by the dead by land only to fall to the reavers along the shore or at sea. The Night's Watch could do nothing; patrols and rangings were lost, slaughtered, turned up again among the White Walkers or lost to the Drowned God.

One could argue the loss of human life was a part of war. But not when they came back the next night as the enemy.

Which was why the only man alive who'd broken the Iron Fleet before was at sea once more.

They were the Iron-born?

Well, he was iron- _forged_. Forged in command and obedience, by combat and bitterness. Hardened by betrayal and abandonment, honed by each bloody step of the march to the sea, beset by mortal men, Walkers, and evil, mist-borne wraiths. Reduced to sinew and obstinacy by the time they began their campaign against the reavers, his sea legs returned the moment he stepped aboard a vessel.

He defeated them when new to command. He would do so again, especially since he had his Admiral of Onions back.

Signal flags dipped and waved along the formation and the king nodded, gestured to his captain. Drums pounded faster than the rising waves, and there - at last - their quarry.

Scorpions were loaded and the fire cages uncovered to build up flickers of flame. Around him, the sounds of battle readiness rose; the clack-clack ratcheting of crossbows being loaded, the thumps and thuds of moving men and equipment. Devan Seaworth came to take the king's cloak and offer him well watered wine.

It was sour enough wine to make the king remember the taste of lemons. It had been a long time since he'd seen a lemon. And salt water - well, he surely had enough of that.

The advance ships sent word rippling back through the fleet. It was the Kraken at last.

***

Around him, one ship or another was careening or sinking or crushed against another hull in a locked embrace of death. The decks were slick, red and deadly with fallen weapons. They were trapped between one of his own sister ships, The Red Bitch, and a nearly empty one from the Iron Fleet.

The king had been one of the first to board her, a gaudy converted merchant's galley, and Lightbringer cut through the mongrel crew weaving ribbons of light through the mist of blood and salt water. He gave a twist to the blade as he drew it from the twitching body of a man dark as a Summer Islander, and raised his head as another crash upset his stance upon the deck.

The ship was painted and shrouded in sails black as the armor on its master. Victarion Greyjoy wore plate mail at sea, unafraid to drown, daring warriors to come and meet him in their lighter armor. He was awash in the the blood of his kills, the tentacled kraken on his chest writhing in the shimmer of each trail of blood.

That axe had greater reach than Lightbringer. And that armor could no doubt turn any lighter steel weapon aside with ease. _Oh, where was bloody Robert and his warhammer now, when I need him?_

Arrows flew toward the fearsome pirate. The king could see some hit the armor and crumple, or slide off.

"Scorpions!" The king shouted, but of course, this ship he was on was now down to three working scorpions and the boarding crew had yet to establish new positions. But there - yes! Past one of the ships with her decks on fire, came the Princess Shireen, moving toward the _Silence_ from her port side.

If Victarion's crew could be engaged...

The king raised his blade to allow its light to catch the pirate's attention. Blood ran down the fuller and dripped across his gauntlet. The golden penumbra about the blade shimmered in the misty air.

Greyjoy spotted the light immediately and raised his bloody axe in response, his massive hand and arm encased in some sort of...No. That wasn't armor. On one arm, his armor ended at the couter, with no vambrace or gauntlet. But his very _skin_ was black as charred meat, split and _steaming_.

"Baratheon!" the Kraken bellowed, shaking his axe. "The Drowned God has answered my prayers! Come and meet your death!"

The Greyjoys had ever been sensitive at how soundly he had beaten them. Even if Robert never admitted it. Sometimes, it was better to be so known by your enemies.

He'd been raised by the sea and had command of a fleet before many knights earned their spurs. Moving from ship to ship in a close fight like this was a type of madness known only to men who knew the wynds of the ocean lanes and the kept their eyes open in the stinging bite of the wind over waves.

Stannis Baratheon drank salt water by _choice_.

The Kraken stood upon the bow of the _Silence_.

When the king moved, the men from Proudwing rose up in cheers and shouts. He climbed up the foredeck and gripped the rail, judging distance as arrows and bolts flew around him.

Finally, someone understood his command, and heavy scorpion bolts and ballistae stones crashed against the _Silence_ and ships around it. The burning ship started to list. Every sail was flickering with thin lines of smoldering red, adding smoke to the air and screening ships from each other.

The deck of the burning ship was _almost_ close enough. He leapt down, skidding against the deck, catching himself along gunwale before he fell completely. _Idiot_. He should have sheathed the sword first. But it kept Victarion's attention on him and provided a beacon for his men to follow. Already, more boots were landing about him as he moved across the careening deck toward the Silence.

"False king! I will shove that shiny toy down your throat!" the old pirate shouted. He pulled his kraken helm on and shoved two of his own crew aside as he strode his deck. One flew over the side into the water and was crushed instantly in the churning mass of ship debris.

And he did exactly what the king wanted. He leapt from _his_ command ship onto the burning one.

Now, the odds evened a bit.

The axe was comically immense; in the hands of an average man it would appear to be some lost giant artifact. The Mountain himself might have wielded it easily, but not many others. Victarion swung it with two hands and the king sidestepped its arc. A piece of mast fell between them, crinkling with orange embers, scattering brief sparks on the deck.

One of the black brothers launched himself at Victarion from the side, a harpoon in his hands. It met the plate and barely dented a spot right under the man's ribcage and Victarion laughed as he knocked the harpoon aside with one arm. But that took away his ability to swing the axe effectively.

The king darted in as quickly as he dared and jammed Lightbringer into the joint above the hip, where leather and a thin chainmail web parted easily as oiled paper. He twisted, harshly and jerked it out, pushing his weight against it and down.

The Kraken roared in pain and that axe came back up and met Lightbringer, the sheer force almost ripping it from the king's hand. A knight shouldered through to try a similar move and Victarion turned his axe up to block and smashed his mailed fist into the knight's face. He hefted the axe again in both hands and after one ineffectual pass from the knight, sent him flying back across the deck without his sword or the arm holding it.

Another piece of the burning mast fell, this one larger, and Victarion swatted it out of the way. "Face me, Baratheon, and face your death!"

The king met him again, stepping over the burning chunks of mast. Lightbringer clashed high against the axe and held, but the strength in the Kraken's arm was inhuman, more like those creatures of blue and ice who commanded the Walkers.

"You will not win _this_ time, green-lander," the Ironborn growled from beneath that ridiculous helm. "I am no weakling like my brother Aeron."

 _Why_ , the king thought, _did some men prattle on like tiresome boys during combat?_ Robert had been like that, always taunting, heaping threats and scorn and japes at his opponents. Some arms masters said it helped distract or frighten a foe or even lure them into foolishness.

He kept his silence and watched warily as Victarion's boots skidded along the deck. Yes. There was the trail of blood from the wound. He turned and backed away from another huge swing from the axe and saw the _Silence_ was under concentrated attack from the Princess Shireen. But the moments he took to glance away gave the pirate a second to get up close and punch him directly in the chest. The king flew back and landed hard against the gunwale in a shower of sparks and burning splinters.

The black brother leapt in front of him and jammed that harpoon up. The king approved. Anything to get the Kraken off balance; get him off his feet and that plate would cripple him on a sinking ship. It caught his helm against one of those tentacles and pushed his head back sharply before the helm flew off entirely. He laughed and pressed his attack, and Greyjoy hit him across the face with the heavy shaft of the axe, and then kicked him before bringing the axe down onto his body hard enough to thud into the deck below it.

The man of the Night's Watch twitched and spasmed as blood spurted from the ruins of his chest. The king did not linger to watch. He rolled across the deck, dragged himself up and aimed right for that spot again, the weakness in the plate...

And the last of the burning mast came down. It struck his arm and shoulder, showered him with sparks and embers, some of which wormed past his gorget to blaze against his neck. His scant hair was short and wet through, but he could feel the pinpricks of burning all over his face and head. The impact and the startling pain ruined his aim and his sword skidded impotently against the blood-slick mail.

Victarion laughed as his armor shed fire and blood. He raised his axe. "The Drowned God awaits you!" he roared.

And _that_ was when something crashed into the doomed ship and it groaned and cracked and the deck split like hardtack, rising and falling in different directions. The crow's body was thrown up against his killer and Victarion went down at last in a great clatter of ink and iron.

The king had to climb the deck, all kiltered as his side began to sink. Arrows studded the deck around him, and one nearly took an ear off. Water started jetting up between the cracks in the deck as the ship began to pull in different directions. But he persisted and was at the peak of the gap to find Victarion rolling to find a foothold on a deck now flooded up to his knees.

And behind him -

The _Silence_ was in flames. Boarders from the _Princess Shireen_ were clambering over the gunwales, studded with hooks and layered shields.

The ship that rammed the one they were battling on was small and also in pieces, her crew fleeing to anything still afloat.

Below him, the Kraken rose, his steaming arm still holding that damned axe. He could _still_ rally his men, he could still fight on.

The king bared his gritted teeth, despite the precariousness of his own situation. Wearily, he judged the distance and the swirling water, and took one deep breath. _Go on_ , he thought, gathering his strength. _Do your duty_.

And hurled himself on top of the Kraken.

Hitting that armor felt like throwing himself against a rock. They both went down into the water, sliding together and shifting the ship remnant sinking deeper. When they stopped, the king was atop, and he struck at Victarion's exposed neck and head repeatedly, to be thwarted again and again by the plate on one arm. But he didn't have that damned axe, so it was just a matter of time...

The smoldering, blackened hand shot up and clamped around the king's throat.

It burned worse than those embers and cut his air off completely. The king could not draw back far enough to use his sword properly, so he smashed the pommel again and again at Victarion's head, splitting the skin and then pulping one eye. As he weakened, the king thought, _at least now he matches Euron_. His vision wavered. Blood or seawater coated his face, dribbled into his mouth as he tried desperately to breathe...

And the chaos of the sea intervened and they were both plunged fully into the water between a mass of colliding ships.

The sudden silence was disorienting for a moment, followed by the knowledge that without another deep breath, he would die. Without looking for his foe, the king pushed upward and broke the surface, gasping. The icy cold water seeped though the layers of wool and leather and the thin plates over his chest and back. But before he could draw a second breath, an iron grip locked around his lower leg and pulled him back.

The Kraken wasn't quite done with him.

The king hacked at the hand gripping him, but it was nearly ineffectual trying to force the sword through water. He hit his own leg more than once, and cursed, trying to stab instead. The weight of the man and his armor was like an anchor and he had no reserves to pull free! Something heavy thumped into his stomach and he choked on air and seawater and floundered. A beam struck his shoulder and at last, Lightbringer fell from his hand, and he had nothing but a dagger, where was his dagger...

And a splash sounded behind him. And another and another. And there were arms around his chest from behind and a familiar voice, shouting, "Your grace!" and he couldn't stay above the water any more, but was dragged under where it was suddenly so much...warmer...

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No one ever seems to note that Stannis was an adaptable military commander as well as a skilled one. Hold a siege as a teenager? He did it until they were making soup out of book covers. Lead a fleet of warships in his early 20's? And defeat the Ironborn *at sea*? These things, Robert commanded him to do and he excelled at both.
> 
> Edited to explain why Victarion had the Silence and to include the bit about his arm.


	6. Show v3 - So Not Fair

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What if he didn't kill Shireen and was still handicapped in all the show ways? Especially the ones that didn't make sense?
> 
> This one started seriously and then turned to snark.

The king was a just man, a fair man. Even his enemies would say so, as they laughed or derided his notions of proper lordly behavior. Even his brothers - nay, to be sure, most assuredly his brothers - mocked him so as often as they remembered him at all.

So, he had to admit the Red Woman spoke truly about one thing.

The day was lost.

Whether this had anything to do with his not committing his own daughter - and heir! - to the flames of her god, one could argue. Certainly he had no clear proof either way. But his army was weakened by the desertion of the priestess and her followers. That his wife left as well was only an added insult. In a lifetime of slights and insults, his wife's abandonment seemed almost...appropriate. Why should he have any one in his company with the slightest sense of loyalty for longer than a candlemark?

At least his daughter was safe.

In that was the _one_ shining example of loyalty to put all else into shadow. For all Lord Davos was no sword and shield man, he would never waver, not in his cursed honesty nor his ...his devotion.

The king stabbed Lightbringer through the flayed man on the surprised foeman's chest before the man even realized he'd left himself open. Oh, the king had reaped a fearsome harvest of life this day, and his remaining knights fought valiantly along with the troops of sell swords caring only for the promise of Iron Bank gold and Bolton plunder.

But they were _still_ outnumbered. Where Roose Bolton had _found_ this mysterious cache of troops was a complete mystery! Word had been he had merely some household guardsmen and light fighters, no heavy horse at all, let alone a battalion waiting to be called upon from some hidden barracks. It seemed the gods themselves were playing some cruel game, giving him more advantages than could be accounted for while _at the same time_ stripping the true king of everything he'd acquired in these few months. It made no sense!

But Stannis Baratheon was accustomed to a world that made little or no sense. He struggled onward all the same. If he could not defeat the Boltons and their wretched rule over the North, perhaps he could at least weaken them for some of the mysteriously missing Northern lords to come in and finish off.

Where _were_ those damned Northern lords anyway? Manderleys, Umbers, even some hill tribe leaders might have been a little welcome help here! Oh, Jon Snow had been full of " _the North remembers_ ," and the Mormont girl was so archly rude in her scrawled "King in the North" note, but were any of those memory-enhanced lords on hand to see if _they_ could perhaps dislodge the Boltons from the Stark castle and keep? Or did any of them object to the forced marriage of their precious Ned's daughter and her subsequent tortures by the most notorious woman-raper-and-killer in all of Westeros? You'd think there WERE no other Northern lords.

He regretted not being able to keep his promises to the young Lord Commander. Robert would say it wasn't kingly.

But the king merely thought of it as _wrong_.

He was exhausted and wounded in a half dozen places, but none of them crippling yet. His guard circled around him, always moving, as their numbers dropped one man at a time. That was how he spotted a similar pattern not far from his position. Yes! Those were guards protecting a single man. Foolishly in no armor at all, save a slick leather surcoat; no helm and no shield.

But his brutish visage and the glee he showed when stamping a boot down on a fallen man identified him as clearly as any banner. It was Ramsay Snow, the Bastard of Bolton.

He almost bellowed the northern name for natural children, but found he couldn't use it as an epithet suitable for this reported monster. Instead, the king shouted in his strongest quarterdeck voice. "Bastard! Come face me!" and the two rings of guards dissolved into a melee of ringing swords and splattered blood, trampling and coloring the befouled snow at their feet.

Roose Bolton's son was delighted to charge in, and it was immediately clear the king's spies and informants were wrong again. Word had been this Ramsey was mostly raised as a peasant, receiving little or no castle training as a knight or warrior. It was said he used a pack of vicious dogs to help him in his hunts of defenseless unarmed women and enjoyed torture, but no one ever mentioned a _word_ about his combat or war training. Roose himself had been no tourney knight; his reputation was that of a strategist and planner.

But three exchanges with the boy and the king cursed every tale teller who had somehow missed the super-human speed and ferocity of the bastard. Had this been his first melee round, or even his tenth, he would have mastered him easily, but at the end of his stamina, the dead falling in rings around him, every hard blow against Lightbringer forced the king back and back again.

"It's over, Stannis!" the boy shouted, swinging his sword two-handed again and again against the king's weakening defenses. "I'll skin you like a stag and make a cloak for my bride!"

 _A talker. Why did he always get talkers?_ The king feinted and the bastard stumbled and finally took a wound, a slash across his left arm that would have been spurting blood in any common man, but apparently only made him _merry_.

He laughed like a moon-crazed, half-drowned, creepy fool, not that the king had ever known such a thing.

"I'll take your pretty sword and use it to rule Winterfell and all of the North when I'm warden!" the boy boasted, lunging forward. "I'll slaughter any man who dares to cross me - not that there have been any but you. I'll stab 'em in the back while they crawl! I'll cut off their fingers and toes and their members and skin them while they scream! Women too! Lots and lots of women! That's the Bolton way! It's our duty! Father says! He's got a fat wife! Did I mention she's fat?"

The king almost threw his sword down right there. Truly, no life was worth this nonsense. Better a clean death...

Except, of course, Shireen was still _somewhere_ in the North. And Davos. They would need time to get far, far away from here.

"I won't leave you, your grace," his loyal Onion Lord had protested. "My place is by your side!"

"Your _place_ is to guard and preserve my daughter," the king had insisted. "I know you would never leave except that you might save her life by doing so. Do not even tell me where you go, but see her safe! And far away from the Lady Melisandre and my wife."

"Your grace-!"

"Go on. Do your duty." And of course, he did.

So, no. He would _not_ just let this strangely garbed and trained youth kill him, the most tenacious warrior in Westeros. By whatever gods existed, (and he truly doubted any of them did right now), he was the _only_ king who bothered to come North - where a giant army of the dead was marching while _everyone else_ played their silly-bugger games of bed hopping incestuous twins, skulking schemers with mysterious plots, dragons overseas, missing dwarves, poisonous kisses, man-loving snitches, naked women, _so many naked women_...

It was like he and Jon Snow and that Tarly boy were the only ones who knew about _tens of thousands of ice zombies_!

Right, then. _Mine is the fury_ , the king thought, banishing from his mind the flaming heart and feeling the familiar rage and strength of the stag rise within him.

And why wasn't Lightbringer shining, anyway? Dammit, what was the purpose of all those ritualized night-fires without giving him a _bloody flaming sword_? The night is dark and full of terrors? The only thing terrible about the night was the complete lack of sense behind why he was standing in the snow with a pissant bastard boy losing a battle that should have been a shining moment in his career as king.

His fury fueled each blow and he put the boy on defensive without even thinking about it. Sparks flew between their blades as their men sank back to give a better angle from which to view the climatic battle of the season.

Which was _winter_.

Finally, the king saw the right opening as the bastard crowed some oath about slicing up his organs for breakfast or something, and slid Lightbringer where it would do the most good.

Right in the sausage and potatoes, as Davos would say.

As Ramsay Bolton rose up on his toes and screeched, the king twisted his blade and ran it further into and through his body. And when he was close enough, he took his dagger and punched it into the bastard's neck.

Aye, that felt good. The dagger in his own chest? Disappointing, but almost expected.

They both fell.

The king felt the pain from all his wounds as he stared at the darkening sky above. Oh, why was everything he got such _rubbish_? Rubbish brothers who gave him no respect, rubbish keep on a barren rock with stone dragons that gave his little girl nightmares...and when he was finally doing all the right kingly things, _this_. So much for showing Westeros why he was the rightful king by saving it. Barely anyone even knew he was here.

At least he killed that crazy bastard. That should count for something.

And...Shireen would be safe. Davos would take care of her, shelter her. _Love_ her. And maybe take her somewhere _warm_ , where women and girls had more freedom and they could live in peace. A sort of ...garden, where naked children laughed and played in warm pools, riding on each other's shoulders, eating sweet blood oranges from the trees. Where a woman could rise to rule according to law and custom, and where no one hurt little girls.

Now the king _knew_ he must be dying. Surely, such a place only existed in the mind of some deranged scribbler of romantic stories. Still...just the corner of his mouth twitched as he imagined his daughter's sweet smile in this fantasy world.

Brianne of Tarth searched the battlefield and was dismayed to find her revenge thwarted.

And even worse...Stannis almost looked _peaceful_.

She stomped back to her hideout to watch for that candle again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ramsay Sue Villain is surely one of the worst adaptations in the D&D portfolio. In the books, he's a brute. In the show? He can run off the 50 "best swords" of the Ironborn with four henchmen and a pack of dogs. (Dogs. When the Ironborn are well known for their close combat and their skills with throwing axes.) He's a ninja! Give him 20 "good men" and he can stage a night-time raid setting a dozen fires simultaneously without a single man being seen or captured! He's a military strategist! He can walk through a battle in a leather coat without a scratch. And ugh, don't get me started on the Sansa thing.


	7. Futurefic v1 - A Shovel Will Not Be Necessary

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jumping ahead to a future way past where we are now. Stannis survives. Shireen survives. And a young man learns some very interesting things.

His eyes were the darkest of blues, like the heart of a glacier during those scant moments of light in the Long Night. They were deeply set under a ferocious brow and a high forehead. In his youth, his hair had been black, just as his daughter had and all the true stags. But now it was iron grey; iron as the man himself.

The boy had been hunter and hunted; crossed leagues of war-torn land and the seas where dead and living things both waited beneath the surface to seize upon the weak and unwary. He'd killed with his hands and teeth, baited giants and Thenns, carved his mark into stone and flesh. He feared _nothing_.

But he was wary of those piercing blue eyes.

"I was just your age when I saw my parents die," the man said, without preamble. "My brother and I watched as their ship went down in a storm."

The young man nodded, brushing a strand of russet hair from his eyes. Dead parents, storms, shipwrecks...he knew those things personally as well.

"I decided the gods I had been told to pray to were useless, if they existed at all. I turned my back on them and pious bleating of the septons."

That earned a grin. The boy had no use for what he'd learned about them, either. Green-lander, southron children's stories.

"I was barely a man when my elder brother rose in rebellion against the Mad King. He was my lord and my elder and I followed him. He told me to keep our home, Storm's End, and I did. We were besieged for almost a year, with the enemy outside our walls, feasting and throwing their refuse into middens where we could smell the rotting scraps of food we would have eaten, had there been a way."

The boy bared his teeth. He had stopped sharpening them, which sometimes made eating awkward, but that curl of his lip was automatic. He knew hunger.

"I had the horses butchered. We weren't going to ride anywhere, and we could eat the grain, so ...the horses. The mules. Then, the cats. I never liked cats, so fine, cats. I did like dogs. Good animals. Loyal. I tried to spare them as long as I could. We ate rats, moles, mice, anything we could find, and yes, the dogs. Men made tea from boiled leather. Women opened their own veins to make broth for their children. While Mace Tyrell laid siege to the banquet table, night after night, throwing bones over his shoulder. For a year, I held Storm's End against all the power of the Reach, slowly starving."

He paused, flexed the fingers of one hand. "A smuggler brought us a shipload of dried fish and onions. Some potatoes. I waited until everyone had something before I took an onion myself, and ate it. Every bite seemed sweet as a summer apple. And later, I rewarded that smuggler with a knighthood."

The boy agreed. Hunger made the worst food very tasty. And the bringer of food should be honored and thanked.

" _And_ I removed the tips from four of his fingers. Used a cleaver from the kitchens. Because while he saved us, saved my home, allowed me to obey my brother's command, still he was a smuggler. He broke the law. The king's law, and my law." He stared at the boy. "So he had to pay. And I saw to it _personally_."

The boy nodded again, his wariness returning.

"I went to war after that. My brother, the king, ordered me to take Dragonstone from the last remaining Targaryen loyalists, so I raised a fleet with those who'd just recently been my foes and I took that damned island. My reward and my punishment was to become its lord, lord of a barren and bleak island of stone dragons where mine only child was to become ill and near to dying."

The man had a little twist at the side of his mouth that was almost like a snarl. There was much more to that story, the boy knew. He knew _so_ much more, and almost opened his mouth to try and say something, but he met those dark blue eyes and kept silent.

"I was called to war again, and this time, I was the Master of Ships. I raised fleets, named captains and pilots, recruited for the crews and went to sea against the Ironborn of Pyke, the Greyjoys." He looked at the boy with a slight gleam in his eyes. "You know the name."

The boy growled, low.

"Indeed. They were renowned pirates, reavers and rapers, who had terrorized the western shores for generations. But they burnt Lannisport and declared old Balon their king. I took my war galley, the _Fury_ , and I smashed Victarion and his captains at Fair Isle. I took Great Wyk at the head of my own troops."

He paused and sipped from a plain goblet by his side. "Later, my brother died, and I was the rightful king. But I had to battle for my crown and throne. I made cause with a foreign god and blackened my honor with the power I got. You know that bargain, as well."

The boy stared back and then looked down. _Old magic_. Gods or demons or the Eaters, it was all the same. Dark deeds and dark results. But men didn't mention such things in the light and green lands, because who there could know what it cost, truly? When food burst from the ground and dropped from trees and every animal was good to eat and few ate men, what reason could there be to offer blood and life to the cold and dark?

"I stopped my struggle for the throne when I first heard of the White Walkers and their masters. That was when I came north of the Wall. I destroyed the wildling army of Mance Rayder, though he had twenty _times_ my numbers. Then I turned south and marched through _your_ lands, gathering the lords who would bend the knee to me and support my army as I came to free Winterfell from the Boltons and Freys and all of their foul allies. I lured them into traps and killed thousands of them at the place they now call the Drowning Croft. I isolated and destroyed the pack of murderers around the abomination known as Ramsey Snow, the Bastard of Bolton, and spiked the head of every traitor lord who swore their service to the Lannisters or aided in the betrayal of their own proclaimed king, your brother, Robb Stark. Good men and true swore their oaths to him, and though he was a usurper to my rightful throne, I welcomed his bannermen and assured them I would restore the Starks to Winterfell. At that time, of course, we only knew two of your father's get who still lived. As it turned out, we were all mistaken."

The boy gave a fleeting smirk. The Starks turned out harder to kill than their enemies assumed. 

"In that time, it was my man who journeyed to find you. Unknown to me, yet still, he was in my service. And while he brought you back toward your home, I joined in the _real_ battle, the one at the Wall."

He rose and walked over to the window, looking out. "You will never know the dark deeds necessary to fight the thing that sent waves of dead against the living. Burnings. Hideous sacrifices and rituals. Monsters from ages past, from nightmares. From across the sea - those damned blasted dragons and their _queen_. I spent months in that war, fighting through leagues of the filth they made of our fallen dead, slaying them again and again. I was a _chooser_ of the dead and the living, for when I gave a command, we would save or abandon, fight or run." He locked his hands behind his ramrod back, his voice chilling. "I had been misinformed about my role; I thought I was going to be a hero. But instead, I was a _butcher_. Or, rather, a chirurgeon, cutting away the rot while trying to save as much of the man as I could find. Thousands, tens of thousands. By my command and by my hand. Before the dragon queen _deigned_ to arrive." He sighed.

The boy sighed, too. He remembered his first view of the dragons, and how his wolf brother first snarled and then whined like a puppy and turned round and round in confused terror. He didn't know then, but it was Ghost and Jon and Jon-Ghost and the dragon...and it was all too much and horrible and _Not Right_ until Bran _told_ him he was all right again, although what did Bran know? He was a _tree_.

The man looked at him again and shook his head. "You are not the Stark I wanted for my daughter. But then, he's not exactly a Stark, now is he?"

The boy shrugged. Figuring out who was who had been a challenge after the dawn came. So many legends and stories and so many dead people who might have known something. It didn't matter much to him, although he could see it was very important so some folk.

"So, my young Lord of Winterfell and Warden of the North, do you know why I've told you all of this?"

"To...know the history of my new good-father?" Rickon guessed. He was still learning so much history. Hide away for a few years on an island with cannibals, and return to find you have a maester attached to you at all times. Learning how to be a lord, the Stark in Winterfell, apparently involved lots of reading, which was an effort for him.

"If you desire a history lesson, you can do no better than ask your betrothed. Shireen has been excellently educated and is both wise and learned and for some reason... _likes_ you." The moment of hesitation and emphasis on the word was oddly hackle-raising.

"No, Lord Stark, it is not a way to share my _adventures_ with you."

The man who had been king leveled his sharp gaze with a dark intensity in his eyes.

"I am merely informing you what I am capable of, should you ever cause my daughter, Shireen of House Baratheon even a _moment_ of sorrow or pain. I may not be a king, but you will treat her like a _princess_. Have I made myself clear?"

 _Oh_. Yes, this he understood. The boy nodded. _Good warning._ Like a bull unicorn ready to trample you after running you through with its horn. He nodded again. "Aye," he said. "Clear."

The elder Baratheon nodded back politely. "Good lad. Thank you for coming to see me."

Rickon was almost through the door, angrily trying to find out where the hell Shaggydog had been all this time, when that wry voice back in the room said, "You may wish to set aside some time to speak to Lord Davos, as well. Go on. Do your duty."

Rickon Stark rolled his eyes. He never thought he'd complain about a long _day_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I find myself charmed by the idea of the Rickon/Shireen ship. Most people feel Rickon will be nearly a wild animal himself when (if?) he returns. I see him as a tattooed, sharp-toothed, Mowgli-esque young man with not a lot to say and a habit of carrying multiple weapons around his body at all times.


	8. Book v4 - The Crofter's Village

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> About that Crofter's Village where Stannis and his troops are snowbound...

 

The dead rose up in stacks like cordwood, all the easier for the few surviving prisoners to divest them of armor, weapons and winter garb. Fur lined boots were much in demand, and sealskin cloaks and hoods as well. The Ironborn ransomed by Iron Bank money had gleefully joined in the slaughter and were quite useful in the construction of gaffs to pull the hundreds of bodies from the lake.

Surcoats, tabards, banners and shields with house sigils were removed as well.

Generous fires roasted and dried the sudden bounty in horsemeat while the farriers and maesters tended to the new additions to the king's cavalry.

The king himself strode through the lines of pack mules and sledges which had made up the supply train for the attack. It was meager; they had not intended to take much time in rousting his starved and chilled forces. But the rations for over two thousand troops over three days were being tallied and divided to provide hot barley porridge with onions and sage to have with the horsemeat. It would seem a lackluster reward for a triumphant army, if they had not been reduced to dining on their fellows.

"Are all the scouts counted and confirmed?" The king asked as he walked. The wind blew back his gold cloak with the thick fur collar. As men saw him, they paused in their labors to cheer and hail his name. He frowned each time it happened, and his head jerked in acknowledgment when he remembered it was only proper.

He had forgotten what it was like to be considered not only victorious, but the actual cause for victory. There was no one who would steal credit away from his triumphs now. He had lost the Blackwater, aye, but alone in the Seven Kingdoms, he heard the call for help coming from the North. He crushed the so-called Wildling King's forces, ten times the size of his own. He recaptured Deepwood Motte and sent the Ironborn scurrying away like rats only to be scooped up at sea by a flanking force.

The North remembered harms done to them, certainly. But they had forgotten it was the man sweeping across their land who had defeated the Ironborn at sea with tactics much like what had gone so well this day. Never recognized, never rewarded. But Stannis Baratheon was the master of the _shaping strategy_ in war.

"Aye, your grace. We have every scout reported in, and near two score additional prisoners who fled the battle."

"Manderlys, or Freys?"

"Mostly Manderlys, your grace. They are being held as you commanded. The Freys were sent to work. Two refused, had to be bound."

"Hang them." The king paused. "But take their clothing first. And what of the Bastard?"

"At least a day behind, your grace."

Just _barely_ enough time.

"Send a boy to find Ser Richard Horpe and tell him to begin the muster. I shall meet him with the Manderly prisoners."

There were several hundred Manderly "survivors." They had nearly all surrendered after turning their cloaks and attacking the rear and flanks of the forces led by Hosteen Frey. The king saw the Frey commander on his heavy horse from his first position at the tower, using a Myrish glass. He had been caparisoned like a tourney knight, two bannermen flanking him, and cast off his heavy cloak with a dramatic gesture before waving his sword to direct the charge into the village. It was very dramatic.

It must have been _quite_ a disappointment when he found himself feathered with a dozen quarrels and then knocked off his handsome steed by wickedly aimed stones from hillsmen who'd been given icy versions of hunting blinds to help them hide in the man-high drifts along the path to the village. They would leap up, sling their shots and vanish amid the snow and trees, leaving the Freys to blunder through the cover and get tangled in strung ropes and shallow, angled pits.

By the time the vanguard reached the village to see the scant line of defenders, they had regained some order. They charged forward, easily outnumbering the bristling line of unmounted knights and footmen and what looked like hastily erected barriers of flimsy branches and broken spears.

The king had come down from the tower by then, drawing his gloves on and mounting his stallion. The sound of combat rang across the shimmering field behind his string of warriors; as he rode to flank them, his guard tight around him, he kept a careful eye on the waves of invaders, watching as his line of men held firm and then started to waver. They appeared outnumbered by at least two to one.

But he waited as his men fell, grinding his teeth in frustration, almost ready to give the command for the secondary plan...until he spotted the blood red banners flying from a copse to the south and then, yes, another one to the west! His rearguard had the attackers enclosed.

He gave the command, and spurred his mount around the field. Horns blew, as what looked like a secondary force appeared to create a formation behind him, this one mounted and more fearsome in look, if not number. They rode not to engage on the flanks, but to array themselves behind that first line of defense...which broke and scattered.

The Freys roared in laughter and cheers as their foes ran, but the king stood in his stirrups and slowly drew Lightbringer, holding it aloft. It was a beacon as obvious as his first position in the tower. The Frey forces almost immediately halted in their pursuit of the fleeing foot soldiers scattering to either side of the field.

The men with the king raised a roar, as they had north of the wall.

_Stannis! Stannis! STANNIS!_

Between the two mounted bands was naught but a patchy, broken field, covered in mounds of old, filthy snow and the dusting of new. Old fire rings and small mounds of debris hinted at an uneven terrain, but aside from a small mound containing an ancient weirwood tree, it _appeared_ to be open ground.

The Freys charged.

And died.

***

Ser Richard was a mirror for his king, lean and dark visaged, his pockmarked jaw covered with the dark bristles every man without full whiskers wore in the cold. The Frey surcoat he wore was only slightly bloodstained; it was, however, coated with frost, which he was brushing off with some annoyance. "Seems I'd be a better Manderly, your grace, they eat fair well I hear. And this Frey bastard was a weedy fellow." He rolled his shoulders. Behind him were two hundred more men in a motley of Manderly and Frey livery and the random sorts of armor and fur worn by any man not considered worth the expense of clothing.

"Should you have an opportunity to better your station, I trust you shall take advantage of it," the king said, as they approached the Manderly hold.

The knight barked a short, harsh laugh. "I will do my best, your grace. But...sire. I belong at your side. I am no mummer!"

"No, thank the gods, you are not. But you belong where I send you. You have the look of the Riverlands. And where Ser Godry would reveal himself through ill-mannered talk and Ser Clayton by his Flea Bottom accent, you are not a braggart nor completely uncouth."

Ser Richard bowed his head in genial acceptance and the King stopped in front of the Manderly host.

Their leader, a whipcord thin man with beady eyes, took a knee, followed in ripples by the men around him. They were unarmed, but had braziers for warmth and their own cloaks and furs.

The king looked them over, his jaw tight enough to crack stone. Certainly it had cracked enough ice this day. Ice from the lakes, drawn out in sheets to make walls for archers to stand behind. Ice, deliberately weakened in a pattern across the entire lake, so when the Frey forces reached the weirwood tree, the "ground" beneath them crumpled, exploded and sank away, carrying man and beast into the freezing waters below.

It was said the sacred trees of the North were once served by sacrifice. If so, whatever gods dwelled or watched over this one should be sated. The Northerners among his men said as much, and fought to volunteer for the next stage, declaring victory was absolute.

The king unbuckled his sword belt and handed Lightbringer to Ser Richard. "Guard it well, Ser."

"With my life, your grace."

The king turned to the Manderlys and nodded, gesturing. When the leader was standing again, the king stepped closer to him and drew a rolled piece of parchment from the cuff of his gauntlet. "Your lord slew my envoy, my Hand. This-" he held it up - "says he did not. But there is no proof, and there is no promise of fealty from Lord Too-Fat-To-Sit-A-Horse. He refused the call from his _rightful king_ , yet came at the beckoning of the man who put a dagger in Robb Stark's heart at the Red Wedding. The North remembers? The North would do well to remember the fate of the Frey forces here today, should you betray me in this."

"I beg your indulgence, your grace." The man was mannerly, calm. "You are correct. His Lordship wishes to explain all to you and shall - once you have taken Winterfell and destroyed the Boltons."

"Which I will do with or without this help you offer."

"Did we not aid you today?" the man asked.

"Today is done. Tomorrow is the question, and the next day. When you meet up with the Bastard of Bolton, will you turn your cloaks again?"

"Best not," Ser Richard said, eyeing the smaller man. "Else you'll be the first one I'll spit."

The man nodded. "As you will, Ser. But I swear by all the gods, old and new, we _will_ open the gates of Winterfell for you."

The king glanced at the skies and ground his teeth. "Very well. Ser Richard, scatter your men among them. We follow tonight."

"Your grace, I must beg one more time..."

"Enough!" The king's eyes blazed. "I need your wits more than your sword, Ser Richard, and I require your obedience!"

The knight pressed his mouth closed and nodded. "As you will, your grace."

The king sighed, remembered how this man had once dreamed of being a member of the Kingsguard, before Cersei Lannister poisoned his reputation with slander. The king had no special guard, only those few knights like Ser Richard who had been with him the longest, who had earned his trust. Why should he pass out colored cloaks when the very idea of such a force had been polluted with the likes of the Kingslayer, or made into folly by his own brother's rainbow of tourney champions?

"Ser, your task is to carry my sword to the foe. And to make ready for me to reclaim it. There are...so few...I _trust_."

It was hard to say without thinking of trust misplaced, trust lost, and...and the man he trusted most of all. Was he truly alive somewhere? In truth, the king would not have sent his Hand on a mission such as this, for he was also no mummer. And his shortened fingers would give him away.

_Ah, Davos. Am I risking all in the mad hope that you live?_

Ser Richard straightened proudly in the silence. He seemed to take it as some sort of honor. The king gave a snort. "Go on, Ser. Do your duty."

"By your leave, your grace."

As the army broke camp, the king had his old sword at his hip and thousands of cheered, newly well fed warriors at his back. They'd been lightly blooded and victorious, a powerful balm for any army. They had left behind only a token number to care for their wounded and keep a few strategic prisoners. The thousands of frozen dead would wait for spring, or be devoured by wolves, perhaps. It mattered not.

Theon Turncloak, though, was coming with him. The Red God _might_ have at least one sacrifice when this was done, assuming Manderly was true. If both Boltons, father and son, died in battle, at least he could execute the man who first betrayed the Starks. Whether it would be by burning, he hadn't decided. It seemed he could win perfectly well without such brutal pageantry.

But in the end, they would all die. And he would raise his banners _and_ the dire wolf above the walls of Winterfell and the Northern lords will fight to bring him men and aid. They would bend the knee and know him as the one, true king.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've read a couple of different theories about what Stannis will do to make the "ground" of that Crofter's Village a killing ground. His men have already weakened the ice of the lakes, and slabs of ice would actually make great traps and blinds for archers and men with slings to hide behind. Every time I read that chapter from the next book, I am more sure that Stannis has planned something he's fairly confident about. And note that in the books, the Iron Bank *comes to him.* That's meaningful.


	9. Show v4 - Lady Stark (some book elements)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Taking Winterfell and rescuing Sansa.

She was not the only one to have nightmares. Battle hardened veterans and sell-swords who eagerly shared tales of gory battles and wounds were stricken with horror at the depravity they witnessed after the battle for Winterfell was long over.

The skinless man on the Bolton banners would fly no more. But alongside those banners, flayed and frozen bodies hung from the walls; unspeakable remains were found in the dungeons. Two still-living prisoners among the rotting strips of skin and scorched bones begged for the mercy of death.

So there were many whose sleep was broken and shattered away by terrors of memory and those fears that come in the wolf hours, when night is not done nor morning come. But they whispered about her screams and cries. They made the very walls weep, they said. For her shattered and broken family. For the coin she paid in suffering to the Bastard.

There were few Bolton men left alive. The king had no intention to spend scant provisions on prisoners, and could hardly be expected to take an oath of loyalty from any of them. And in truth, every one executed further bound the North to him, by debt if not respect for his crown.

It had been in the king's mind to spare the Bolton servants. It was only proper for a servant to obey their masters, and most were perfectly willing to exchange one lord for another so long as they got their porridge and a place to sleep. Indeed, many threw themselves at the feet of the conquering forces praising the gods old and new for their salvation from the Boltons. But until the day of sacrifice, it had not occurred to him that some of them might have been as eager to torture and slay innocents as the Bastard himself.

Roose Bolton had been dying before the king and his guardsmen entered the great hall. The king took a long look at him, slumped against one of the great dire wolves at the base of the lord's seat. A pool of blood was still slowly growing under his body. The king half lifted his own sword and then gestured to one of his guardsmen instead. Bolton's ice-grey eyes were impassive, betraying only a very slight look of resignation before the guard's pike put an end to his life.

But Ramsey, grinning like some mountebank gleeman and surrounded by a pack of fierce hounds, took at least half a dozen attackers down while spitting curses and threats. He had armed himself with Lightbringer, but it did no more for him than it had ever done for the king; indeed, it just made it easier to find him. The king had offered a gold dragon to whomever could capture the Bastard of Bolton alive . A crossbowman cleverly put a heavy bolt into his leg, and sheer numbers finally overwhelmed him.

He lived to be dragged, screaming with fury and impotent maledictions, to a stake erected outside the walls.

The last remaining Stark came to witness.

There was some disagreement over what to call her. She had been wed to Tyrion Lannister in King's Landing, and then again to the bastard using the Northern rites of the old gods. She would be properly addressed as Lady _Lannister_ \- and the king was nothing if not proper. But the stories told by the servants revealed she had gone to Ramsey Snow a maiden.

A strange world, where the Imp who caused thousands of men to die in terror and fire upon the Blackwater, upholding the slaughtering might of his cloak-turning family, might have treated a highborn maiden of the north with kindness while the rest of his family murdered her parents and brother and tortured her before the court.

It mattered little. He would pay for his crimes as they _all_ would, when the king took his throne.

But disputing how to properly address the girl was pointless. She was pale as mist over ice, haunted by the torments she'd survived. When she was brought before the king, she stared into his eyes and said, her voice cracking, "I am Sansa Stark, and this is my _home_."

And so, fine. Lady Sansa. It was a little thing to grant her.

She walked carefully, and with a regal dignity, a dark hood over her striking crown of red hair. Davos had mentioned something about half the men speaking of her like some princess out of a song.

And what else exposed the nonsense of such songs than how this "princess" had been raped and tortured, the king noted. And ground his teeth in fury. How much earlier could he have gotten here if Lord Snow had found a way to _help_ him, if more Northern lords had _bothered_ to answer his demands for their support? _So much for their memory and their loyalty to their precious Starks_.

Selyse and Shireen were already present; Melisandre had begun her prayers and declamations for the gathered believers. The king was weary of such displays, but in this case, burning seemed more than appropriate. The Red Woman would have her sacrifice, and the bastard would die slow and painful death.

The king was not watching the prayers, which was how his eye caught the movement around her as she strode through the ranks of soldiers. They parted for her and whispers followed in her wake.

 _She has the look of her mother_ , the king mused. Catelyn Tully, the Riverlands beauty promised to the first son of Winterfell but married to the second. Robert had spoken of her in his typically lusty fashion, but it had been Petyr Baelish who boasted of dalliances with both Tully girls while he was fostered at Riverrun. Sitting on the Small Council was a trial of its own, but when Stannis had listened to such boasting long enough, he'd snapped something about gossiping fishwives and stormed out feeling oddly _personally_ affronted.

But here at Winterfell, he remembered the only other time he'd been at the Stark home. After Balon's ill-advised rebellion, he had come here with Robert and the still celebratory Northern forces. Catelyn had been a welcoming Lady at Winterfell, despite having recently borne her second daughter. The riotous invasion of Robert and his lords was no doubt a great burden for a woman who hadn't seen her husband in months and had to receive the Greyjoy hostage to raise along with her true born children and Ned's own bastard. But Stannis remembered how elegant and gracious she seemed, and how happy and proud Ned was of his family.

The steel in the mother was evident in her daughter. She was like some eerie winter maid, pale and crowned with that magnificent hair, red as the leaves on their heart trees.

 _Now who was the songster?_ The king turned to see the priestess lower her torch to base of the stake. The bastard howled and spat curses and blood and froth from his thick lips, struggling and shaking in his chains.

The Stark girl stopped several lengthy paces away and watched with dispassion. The king gestured and his guards made a way for him to stand by her. The bastard screamed at her, ordering her to burn with him, threatening vengeance upon everyone there. But as the flames caught onto his trousers and the edge of his shirt and sleeves, he was reduced to howling out nonsense until he began to scream in genuine anguish. The last discernible word he howled was "Reek."

No one sent _him_ a merciful arrow. It took him quite some time to finally slump over in the chains, his entire body alight.

"Thank you, your grace."

The king turned and inclined his head briefly. "It was justice, Lady Sansa."

"Justice." Her voice was bitter. "There is little justice in the world."

The king nodded and looked away. She had a right to judge him. "That is so," he ground out. "But it is my duty to see justice done. I...would that I had gotten here sooner. There will be more executions tomorrow, including the turncloak, Greyjoy."

 Her touch upon his arm was so light he didn't feel it at first. When he did, his first reaction was shock. So few touched him, ever. Her Tully blue eyes stared into his own for a moment. "You must do as you will, your grace. But...Theon has suffered."

That was curious. "Do you plead mercy for him? After his betrayal?"

She gave a strange, sad sort of laugh. "I have lost count of betrayals, your grace. But if you would continue to serve justice here, seek the houndsman's daughter and those two men there." She nodded toward the Winterfell gates. "They all delighted in the torment and death of...of good people. People who wanted to...help." She lowered her head and then raised her eyes back to the smoldering form that was once her husband.

The king had them seized. Fewer people gathered for the beheadings the next day, but the king stood to watch them all. Lady Sansa came again, stood silently and witnessed.

The king approved with the slightest of nods.

"Winterfell is yours," he said to her that night. "Your bastard brother refused my offer to make him Lord Stark and Warden of the North, and so it falls to you. As king, I find your marriages both illegal under the laws of Westeros. You may reclaim your family name."

"Winterfell shall be ever loyal to your reign, your grace."

"It's not just Winterfell I need, but the rest of the North. There is a great war coming, beyond the Wall, and I have enemies at my back. I will garrison some knights and soldiers here, but you must call your banners for defense and to send to the Wall."

A faint smile curved on her lips. "I can do better than that, your grace. I believe I can bring the might of the Vale to your service."

 

***

 

"She is _far_ more agreeable than her bastard brother," the king said with some satisfaction.

"I do not doubt you find her so, your grace," his Hand replied.

"She seems wise for her age, apart from believing the turncloak and his tales about her brothers."

"Compassion and hope are rare enough these days, your grace."

The king gave a slight snort. "My _hope_ is that you have advised me well in leaving Shireen in her care. The Wall is no place for a young girl. She can learn much from Lady Sansa, and not merely social graces." He sighed and pressed his lips together. "It is..." he paused. "Regrettable...how she was so ill used. By Cersei's abomination, by the Imp, by Littlefinger...what was that whore-mongerer thinking, delivering her to the Boltons? Increase the reward offered for him _alive_."

"It will be done."

"From all I've seen, she would have made a good lady wife for an honest and just man. Instead, she has seen the foulest..." He stopped and shook his head.

"And so she may be one day, your grace. She is but young."

"Aye." The king. slapped a hand down on the table between them. "Now, where are the accounts from the quartermasters on weapons and armor we can leave here?"

 

***

 

Winterfell was not completely still in the night. But it hummed with _life_ again, the dire wolf flying and all traces of the flayed man destroyed, cut away, burned...like her husband.

 _He was never a true husband_ , she thought, wrapping her cloak around her. _I have been betrothed to a king, married to a dwarf and married again to a bastard, and never have I had a true husband_.

It seemed like another life, another person, surely, who'd dreamed of nothing more than to have a husband from a proud and ancient family and be a loving and loyal wife to him.

But _this_ king said it and it was so. She had no husbands. She had only tormentors and gaolers. _I am Sansa Stark of Winterfell. And this is my home_.

Her father's solar was where the king had his continual stream of meetings with knights and captains, his captive maesters and those who'd turned their cloaks in hope of his mercy. He did not seem a merciful man.

But he was a _just_ one. And it seemed he never slept. Perhaps he, too had his night visitations? It seemed unlikely. But the heavy doors were open and the flickering light within the room meant there was a fire and additional lamps lit as well. He was awake, as she was.

When she first saw the king, it was hard to believe he was a Baratheon. He was nothing like the fat, lustful drunkard who'd allowed his wife to order Lady's death, who'd been cuckolded by that woman and her _brother_ \- a member of his own Kingsguard! And there was nothing of handsome, clever and jesting Renly in him either. His dull, functional armor wasn't all picked over with gems or decorated with stag's horns, and though his cloak _was_ gold, it was sensibly thick with fur. Much like her father's had been.

And his manner! No courtly gestures or poetry or bawdy japes ever came from those thin, firm lips. Indeed, he never seemed to smile. He took no wine, save that it was well watered, and spent more time with papers and maps than boasting of his victories. He was begrudging, curt, occasionally dismissive and cruel and...

She hadn't felt this _safe_ in so long.

Petyr Baelish had warned her long ago that life was not a song. But she had buried any hope of music some time ago. _All I want is to be me again. Here, in my home. And to never, ever be that afraid again_.

She would laugh, if she could. All her life she wanted a handsome knight like Ser Loras to sweep her away and give her the security and honor of being a lady in her own keep. And what did she get? What made her feel stronger now? A dour and oft-mocked Baratheon, stiff as a pike, plain as pewter and almost as blunt as the Hound...

Although he _did_ have a magical sword.

That did make a tiny laugh squeak out, and there was a scrape of a chair or bench in the solar and the sounds of footsteps.

She debated backing away, but the guard outside the door turned to her as well, and she stepped into the light. "I apologize, ser, I should have made myself known."

"Lady Sansa?" The king was tall. Out of his armor and heavy cloaks, he was lean and rangy as one of the many stone wolves throughout the keep.

"I beg your pardon, I did not mean to disturb you, your grace."

 He frowned; even with the light behind him, she could see the narrowing of his eyes. "Do you have a need, my lady?"

_I want to sleep in my home without remembering pain. I want to be as strong as Mother, as fierce as Arya, as brave as Robb, as noble as Father. I want..._

"Perhaps a moment of your time, your grace?"

He gave one of his curt nods and the guard stepped back.

"I do not keep my squires so late. And you should be attended." He waved a hand toward a pitcher with goblets beside it.

"War disturbs gentility."

He favored that with a low, wry sound and returned to his table of plans. "That same Mormont girl who impudently spent a raven to defy me has decided you are an acceptable _queen in the north_ and will send the supplies and soldiers here."

"Your grace knows I seek no such title, I hope." Why didn't he frighten her? He sounded angry, almost threatening. But he made her feel like smiling. "Bear Island has long been our faithful bannermen...and Lyanna must be our banner- _girl_."

"The North seems wealthy in warrior women. See that such faith does not lead to declaring a new usurper, my lady. You asked for a moment, you have it. What would you have of me?"

Again, his words were harsh - yet she felt that urge to smile. Not the simpering mask she crafted and wore in King's Landing, or the easier one she could slip into in the Vale.

"I have written to my brother the Lord Commander," she said. "I've told him what Theon told me about our other brothers."

"It's folly to believe a turncloak. And further folly if you think the Lord Commander will forsake his position to run off in search of them on the word of such a traitor."

"I don't believe he will forsake his vows, your grace. But if my brothers left in the care of a wildling woman, perhaps Jon might ask some of these wildlings he treats with if they have heard any word of them."

The king nodded. "Hope. You and my Hand come to me at the seat of House Stark and talk of hope in the face of your own words. Winter is _here_. These so-called free-folk will tell you whatever lies they think you wish to hear if you give them gold, or land on this side of the wall." He deigned to look at her at last, and his dark blue eyes reflected the dancing light of the fire.

"Then I shall think myself fortunate to have your wisdom to temper any rash judgments I might make, as well as my brother's good sense. Jon was ever...a cautious boy. If they have named him Lord Commander, I am sure he will be able to judge truth from falsehood."

 "Cautious." The king gave another rough, scoffing snort and walked the length of his map table, shaking his head. "The damned boy is proud and stubborn and too noble by half. He shall learn a harsh lesson one day about _nobility_."

"I pray he does not, your grace."

The king stopped, and took a slow breath. When he turned back to her, he nodded slowly. "Aye. Well, we do not choose many lessons we learn. I will carry your message. More maesters and ravens have been sent for, and in time, unless this winter becomes unnaturally foul, there will once again be regular communication between the Wall and Winterfell."

"I await that day. And I will pray for your success in the field, your grace."

He gestured toward the smaller table where his correspondence was stacked, clearly expecting her to deposit the letter there. So he was surprised when she came close and held it out for him to take. That frown re-appeared.

"Thank you," she said, looking up into those dark eyes again, taking in the shadows around them, the hollowed cheeks, the black whiskers threaded with grey and white. "I once believed in heroic knights, handsome princes and gallant champions. It was a child's folly. A lesson...no one would choose to learn. I was a fool, and I can never forget how much of my foolishness condemned my family to death."

His frown deepened and she rushed on, not wanting to explain. How could this man even _begin_ to understand the stupid hatred she had for her own _sister_ , enough to lie and protect a monster? Even after they murdered Lady, still she held onto those stupid, _stupid_ fancies and nonsense, and one by one her entire family was taken and she was nothing but lies behind a vacant smile and empty courtesies, hidden to everyone but a brutal, frightening man...who never lied to her.

Safety was a kind of brutal honesty.

"If my brothers are alive, I know Jon will want to help find them. I will hold Winterfell, your grace, and rebuild it and I will raise armies for you, because you freed me. You, alone, came here and you _punished_ them and you are the reason I can find ways to search for Bran and Rickon if they live. Because you didn't promise anything, you didn't swear any oaths or make grand plans or talk and boast about what you would do. You just...go onward. And you do your _duty_. I...I never understood what that _meant_ when I was a girl. Now...I think I know it better."

He took the letter and his lips parted but there was a flicker of confusion in his eyes. He seemed to start to say something but paused.

 _I made Stannis Baratheon speechless_ , said an almost unrecognizable girlish voice inside Sansa Stark.

"Well. Quite a speech, my lady." He recovered and favored her with a twist of his lips, a slight curl that exposed a gleam of teeth. "I am sure the proper response is something like _I am honored by your esteem_. But as you said... war disturbs gentility, so I will say good night to you and remind you I expect news of what support I may expect and when as soon as possible. There is a Stark in Winterfell as so many Northerners have asked for. Now we shall find out whether they know _their_ duty."

She gave a graceful curtsey and he nodded...and then walked her to the door. For a moment, she thought he was going to actually walk her to her chamber - but he beckoned one of his guards and ordered him to escort her.

That night, she slept deeply.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Giving Sansa the Jayne story so she could be raped and tortured by Ramsey so Theon could be redeemed was one of the three major deviations from the books and betrayals of potential storylines that had me seething at the end of season 5. (Dorne and Stannis being the other two. They also took a lot of nuance from the Castle Black story, and added an annoying boy, but I could almost for give that because they raised the whole ice zombie stakes, and frankly. the show needed some ice zombies.)
> 
> But if we're not going to get bad ass Sansa the Northern Ninja, could we have at least gotten a damn rescue that was about her and not about making freakin' Theon look like he got all better? And, by the way, not that Theon attacks RAMSEY, who IS a ninja and an army commander and got his own "love triangle" this season, because they think he's so awesome. But he attacks the girlfriend. Because there hadn't been enough dead woman around this year, no doubt.
> 
> So, I first outlined a version where Stannis dies while taking Winterfell. But then I said, you know what? I'm just going on with a happy for now ending with some possible UST for the shippers and I am moving on. And then it became a monster.


	10. Futurefic v2 - Before the Dragon Queen (A)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stannis Baratheon, false king. You rose in rebellion against the Iron Throne's true king and prince with your brother Robert, the first usurper king. Confess your crimes and bend the knee to Daenerys of House Targaryen, First of Her Name, the Stormborn, Mother of Dragons, Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea, Queen of the Seven Kingdoms, the Rhoynar, the Andals and the First Men...

"Stannis Baratheon, false king. You rose in rebellion against the Iron Throne's true king and prince with your brother Robert, the first usurper king. Confess your crimes and bend the knee to Daenerys of House Targaryen, First of Her Name, the Stormborn, Mother of Dragons, Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea, Queen of the Seven Kingdoms, the Rhoynar, the Andals and the First Men."

He stood stiffly, his back unyielding as his final forces had been. The Dragon Queen looked down on him from her perch on the Iron Throne, a seat no more comfortable than the marble slab in Mereen, and a great deal more perilous. From her place above him, he appeared old, gaunt, and common. The thin fringe of hair on his head was more iron than coal, and his hollow cheeks were dusted with unkempt whickers. His hands were manacled before him, more gesture than necessity. The Red Keep was hers now, and all within it. Including the final usurper.

The prisoner said nothing and the silence grew oppressive. Missandei glanced back at her Queen and the Targaryen frowned.

"The Queen commands a response," Missandei prompted.

The prisoner's eyebrows arched up slightly in curiosity. "Why?" His voice rasped; many who'd served on the fields of battle in the far north returned with such an affliction. Breathing in the harsh winds of winter and the ashes of the dead left some scars which could only be heard.

Missandei stared back at him for a moment. "She...she is your Queen."

"Then she needs nothing from me. This is no trial. If I am to be executed, best get on with it. There is no need for..." His lip curled slightly. "Such mummery."

The court erupted in gasps and titters and whispers and Daenerys Stormborn shot to her feet.

"How dare you, Baratheon dog? It was your house that put a false king upon my throne and murdered helpless women and children! Do you deny it?"

"I deny nothing. I admit nothing. You have the throne and the power. If it is your will to condemn me to death, then do so. But I have no wish to entertain your...court." In that pause, his dark blue eyes slowly swept the gathered crowd, many known to him. Scorn dripped from every word he uttered.

"You do not have the luxury of wishes, Stannis Baratheon," the Queen said, seating herself again. She gestured with one pale and slender hand, and one of her Unsullied guardsmen bowed and backed away. When he returned, he was not alone.

"Father!"

The man who might have been king turned to his daughter as she was dragged forth. There was another ripple of whispers and hisses and a few titters. "Unclean," hissed a woman from one side. "Dragonstone's dragon girl," came a sly voice from another.

"What do you have to say _now_ , pretender?" came the voice from the throne.

Stannis Baratheon had not taken his eyes from his daughter. His hands formed into fists, then opened slowly. His chest rose and fell, and for a moment, he closed his eyes, allowing his head to fall slightly forward.

Shireen struggled, but the stoic guard held her by the arm. "Let me go, please!"

Stannis lifted his gaze to the throne. "She has done nothing against you. She is innocent of my...deeds."

"She is the child of a murdering usurper and my enemy, or the child of a _subject_."

The king who never sat his throne exhaled slowly and seemed to give the smallest of nods. His daughter ceased her struggles and blinked as tears trailed her scarred cheek. "No, father, no," she whispered. 

Stannis Baratheon went to his knees.

With a thin smile, the Dragon Queen rose. "Look upon the final usurper," she said in triumph. "In our mercy, the child Shireen shall be considered heir to Storm's End and free of the taint of rebellion and betrayal."

"Oh, most worthy queen!" exclaimed a perfumed courtier , with a ripple of murmurs and echoed praise.

"But we shall abide no traitors to our throne. Stannis Baratheon is sentenced to death, ending forever the house and name that betrayed the true kings and queens of this realm."

Guards struck the floor with their pikes and spears and there was even a ripple of applause under the cries of the more vocal courtiers. "All hail Queen Daenerys!" "Fire and blood!"

Two guards stepped forward and grasped the condemned man by the arms and brought him to his feet; he had his teeth set, rigid as a mast even in their disdainful handling. But when the girl cried out again, the last male Baratheon turned his head to see her, his eyes two dark wounds under his brow.

She struggled in vain against the Unsullied holding her, until the Queen made a gesture. Shireen almost fell forward when her arm was suddenly released, but recovered and threw herself at her father. Unable to raise his arms to embrace her, he lowered his head instead.

"Father, no, no, please, tell them what you did, tell them about the _Wall_ , and the _Others_ , tell them to let you go, please!"

"You must..." his voice caught, and he winced as the words came out like gravel. "Shireen. You must be...the lady. Rule Storm's End. Be just, and true..." he coughed, turning his head to one side, eyes squeezed shut.

"Father, I can't! Not without you!"

That opened his eyes. "You must," he rasped. "It is..."

She looked up, tears streaking her cheeks. "My duty?"

"Aye." He brushed his cheek through her hair. "You are...my _daughter_. Go on. Do your duty."

His guards jerked him away from her as the Queen's voice came from the throne. "The girl need not witness," the Dragon Queen said. "Escort her to–"

"No! I...I mean, please, your grace." Shireen turned toward the throne and its occupant. "Please let me attend." She dashed fresh tears away with one hand.

For a moment, the fair Queen looked confused. She glanced from side to side at her advisors, but none came forward with a suggestion.

"As you wish," she finally said with a nod.

There were some cheers, but not nearly as many as in previous executions by the new Queen's order. Her mercy extended to a headsman instead of the barbaric way she had allowed her dragons to burn and tear apart others who had earned her wrath. There were some present who had also served on the ground in the frozen lands north of the Wall; they were all silent and grim. With them stood the new Lady of Storm's End, who dried her tears so they would not be the last thing her father saw.

 

 ***

 

Mistaking Lightbringer for an ancestral sword, the Queen's agents returned it to Shireen. The glow was almost entirely gone, only a pale memory of the scarlet and gold it had cast through the nights when her father raised it in defense of the realms of men. She had it strapped to her saddle as her small party took the King's Road south toward Storm's End.

By the time they emerged from the Kingswood, her retainers had grown by several more. No one made mention of it.

"We rejoice to see you, my princess," said the common looking young man riding to her left. Wisps of mud-brown hair sprouted across his cheeks and along his chin. It would be some time before he could grow the thick whiskers his father sported. His voice was deep though, and hoarse.

"And we grieve," added the knight to her right. "May the Lord of Light curse the dragon bitch for all eternity!"

"I am no princess." The two men fell silent. The youth who learned to dance with her on Dragonstone and the knight who first offered his hand to her when Sigorn wed Alys at the Wall. Oh, how she'd laughed that day, spinning round and round amid wildlings and men of the Night's Watch. Her father had seemed like a giant then, invincible, implacable. He was going to take back the North, free Winterfell, settle the hungry wildling hordes upon the safer lands south of the wall and defeat the marching armies of the dead...

And then was executed by a foreign child born of incest out of a line of madmen.

 _Rather typical for King's Landing._ Her father's voice was wry and dry in her memory; she had always appreciated his dark humor, even before she knew exactly why the things he said were so droll.

"My father bade me to do my duty," she said, unbinding the sword. "Are you my men as you were his?"

"Until death, my lady," swore the knight.

"All I am and have is yours," said the smuggler's son. He looked at her in curiosity even as he took Lightbringer from her outstretched hand.

"Take this and go to Asshai. Find me a priest and a shadow-binder."

The knight smiled thinly; the younger man took the sword and frowned. "My lady, the dragons came for this... Targaryen girl. Though his grace your father battled like a hero in the north, he was not...I mean it seems he was not...Azor Ahai. What do you think we can do with this?" He slid the blade partly out of the scabbard. In the daylight, its glow was imperceptible.

" _Some_ dragons came to her, yes." Shireen Baratheon, once a princess, brushed hair back away from the greyscale mottling along her face and throat. "But dragons have come to me every night all my life."

The young man nodded with a sad smile. "You used to think they were coming to eat you."

"I was a child. I didn't know dragons could do anything else. I know better now."

"What do you know, my lady?" the knight asked.

"That the only thing to challenge a dragon is another dragon. A far more terrible dance than the one you led me in, Ser Brus. My father never believed in gods, not after my grandparents perished upon Shipbreaker Bay." She met his curious gaze with pain and anger blazing in her eyes. "But it doesn't matter what you _believe_ , does it? The only thing that matters is what _works_."

She took a slow and deep breath and stared ahead, down the road. "Find a shadow-binder. Shadows dance, you know. Speak of the stone dragons and the man who drew this sword from the flames. While you are gone, I will be quiet as a mouse, gentle as a bay seal. The dragon queen will know me to be a harmless, lonely girl. But hasten back to me, good sers. I have a _duty_."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Back to tragedy. Do I believe Dany would still execute Stannis, even if he contributed to the war in the north? Oh, hell yeah. She is not consistent in justice, something that's been magnified in show!Dany for some reason. 
> 
> But I also believe that Stannis could be the sort of man who stood up in front of a woman with dragons and still insisted the throne was his. I can *also* see him accepting a Targaryen return to the throne since they did hold it before Robert AND part of Robert's claim was the Targaryen blood in the Baratheon line. It could go either way. In this case, I decided to go for hard-case Stannis who would never bend.
> 
> Unless there was good reason. 
> 
> And I also decided on Bad-ass Shireen instead of pacifist, sweet and shy Shireen because, hey, why not?


	11. Greenseer v1 - The iron King

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We don't need no Iron Throne, someone said one night. We got us an Iron King! So long as he stands upon the Wall, the Wall won't ever fail.

The king was worn away, sculpted by hunger and deprivation, hardened by unrelenting cold and wind. He was rarely alone, save when he slept, the one man who stubbornly resisted the sensible and necessary warmth of his fellows.

Perhaps it was because otherwise, he was never without the demands of his command. Lords and mercenary captains, the former officers of the Night's Watch, the tribesmen from the North, the wildling clan leaders, the troops sent from the Riverlands and the rarer southron commanders and the odd band of mongrel fighters from the cannibal isle all came to him eventually. Maesters from every corner of what remained of a realm, healers and septons and foreign priests and strange magicians all found him, astonished to find the last contender from The War of Five Kings and each other.

It was the ravens.

Some said it was at the crofter's village when the first one found him. And then many more took wing. Some carried messages, like castle-bred birds, yet these had no castle bound to them. Some merely spoke.

Almost like men.

They came from the witch boy, the Greenseer, the lost Lord Stark. They flew where he told them. And many of them flew to the king at the wall and helped to gather a motley, defiant army along the greatest barrier ever built, to hold back the armies of the dead.

Every day, flocks of them shot through the cruel winter air that struck other living things like a great wave and carried more messages.

 _Eastwatch is under sustained strikes from waves of the the dead_.

 _A sapphire-eyed Other, one of the masters, had been spotted in the Haunted Forest, and spindly creepers, large as gazehounds, scampered before him tearing men apart with their razor-sharp legs_.

 _A Thenn encampment was found desolate and empty save for a circle of heads stuck on thigh bones stripped clean_.

 _More than four-score Silent Sisters, defended by a thousand of the Faith Militant, were coming up the King's Road, nearing Queenscrown_. _They left another thousand graves in their wake as they died from cold and hunger, yet still they came._

 _A well-paid smuggler has left Bear Island with a load of dragonglass_.

 _Dragons had engaged a wave of enemy creatures in the southern Frostfangs_.

Dozens of orders went out every day, some written, some spoken to the more clever birds. The king was rarely seen without a maester or a raven or both nearby. Trays of precious foodstuffs were guarded and kept aside for the dark feathered messengers.

Veteran Black Brothers nudged each other and told tales of Lord Commander Mormont's raven.

 _He was never as clever as the king's ravens_ , they said. _That bird never fookin' shut up when the Old Bear told 'im to. **These do**_ **.**

They say that one day, one of the ravens landed light as you please on the king's shoulder and he turned his cold, dark eyes to it and snarled, "You may NOT," and it immediately flapped over on to Dolorous Edd's head. Edd declared it was the finest hat anyone had ever given him, shit and all.

Daylight was as precious as fuel and food, and as diminishing with every day. But the Wall was HELD. By all the gods, new and old, by every totem of faith and every drop of blood spilled, this scattered and starved army closed every tunnel, barred every gate and sent thousands upon thousands of the dead to their final rest, whether in the seven hells or the heavens or to oblivion.

They watched, helpless, when hundreds of fleeing refugees were caught in sparsely defended areas and slaughtered. They braved the unholy death and reanimation with every command to engage on the ground, and then returned, if they could, with their own dead to burn.

Wounded and non-combatants were everywhere. They cleaned and rolled cloth for bandages, stirred massive communal stewpots, mended and made clothing, weapons and armor. Fletchers carefully knapped dragonglass chips into arrow and spearheads. Anyone who was hale was given work and the work never ended.

And above it all, Stannis Baratheon walked the Wall every day, gazing off into the far north. His guards would stay a distance away, giving him the illusion of privacy. Sometimes, he would have his Hand by his side. But often, it was his spare, cloaked form, standing stiff against the howling winds and drifting snow, watching. Planning. Then he would turn, gesture, and issue orders and they would be followed.

And every day, more died.

He was admired, save for those days when he ordered a raper gelded, and some men just couldn't understand how they could lose even one more fighter over a simple little bit of fucking.

He was feared by those who knew their turn would come to be ordered out and north with nothing but a promise of a burned body should they die. By those who wondered how it was possible that some crippled, dead boy could possibly be sending messages and how the magic that came from fire and blood and sacrifice and wild creatures with intelligent eyes could possibly be a safe thing to wield. They feared old, old magic and its price, and feared the man who seemed to fear them not.

He was hated by those who lost friends, family, brothers in arms. By the wounded who wept if they had eyes and mourned lost limbs and wits in the long winter nights. By the craven, who wished they could desert but knew death awaited them in any direction if they ran alone.

And at last, though he wouldn't have believed it if anyone told him...

He was _loved_.

He was loved for his brutally effective strategies that won the North back from the Boltons and delivered vengeance for the Red Wedding. He was loved for the stories of the sacrifices he'd made - even his _wife_ , some whispered, given to the fire god for that glowing sword which lit up the dark skies whenever he drew it. He was loved for the way he raised common men to knighthood and lordships, treated them like proper men regardless of birth and station, indeed only cared how they proved their mettle where it counted.

The brothers of the Night Watch who remembered him quoted Donal Noye the Giantslayer, the old blacksmith who'd served the Baratheon family back in warmer days before he came to the Wall.

 _Stannis is pure iron, black and hard and strong, yes, but brittle, the way iron gets. He'll break before he bends_.

 _We don't need no Iron Throne,_ someone said one night. _We got us an Iron King! So long as he stands upon the Wall, the Wall won't ever fail._

 

***

 

The Iron King was a dead man.

In the small brazier on his table curled the remains of the last several written messages he'd received. The birds carrying them had flown off for their reward of half-thawed horsemeat, but one larger raven perched on his armor stand, its head cocked as it watched him.

The king resisted an urge to ask it questions. He'd never liked their croaks and cries, understood the old saying, "Dark wings, dark words," the instant he'd first heard it. If he asked a question and got one of those repeated words they were apt to screech, he'd wring its neck and toss it to the cook for the stewpot and hope Lord Bran Stark felt the heat.

That was unworthy and foolish. He hadn't slain a messenger yet, and it was not this Stark's fault a dragon had fallen.

But which one? Was it the black, the largest and most fierce? The green, supposedly ridden by the least likely dragon hero a fool could conjure for a feast's riddles and japes?

Or the white?

That foolish, stupidly noble boy. Was he dead? _Again_? The cold and rational truth was it mattered not, save he carried one of the swords that could kill an Other and was one of only three dragon riders. Men died every day, by the score, by the hundreds. Stark or Targaryen or both, he was but one man.

But the DRAGON.

 

> _The Others will raise it. The legions march to the Wall. It will fall. Hold as long as possible. I am sorry_.

 

**It will fall.**

_But hold it none the less_.

The king closed his eyes. It was Storm's End again, except this time he knew he was fated to fail.

When he opened them, he stared at the raven. It cocked its head again, giving him one inky, beady eye.

"I will hold it," the king growled.

The raven stilled its jerky movements and slowly, with an uncanny gentility, bowed its body toward him.

And blessedly saying nothing, it took to the air, flying out the door as soon as he opened it.

"Summon all the commanders," he told his messengers and squires. "Have the maesters bring every raven we have to the hall. We must begin an evacuation and prepare for an assault upon the Wall."

 

***

 

"It seems I shall be a page upon someone else's history book after all," the Iron King said to his Hand. "The king who lost the Wall."

The stupid, stubborn man actually refused his command to leave. _Refused_!

"I will eternally beg your pardon, your grace," he'd said. "But I shall die by your word or by your side."

 _Impudent smuggler_. One would think he would leap at the chance to join his youngest sons and his wife, to retire to warmer lands and never again freeze and starve at the side of his wretched king. But he remained.

At least he had the sense to send his son away. The king knighted the boy before he left with the last troop of non-combatants as one of their guards. He protested as well, until the king charged him with serving Princess Shireen. "Go to her at Winterfell and swear yourself to her protection and service, young Seaworth. My daughter is all I will leave in this world."

Unlike his father, he was properly obedient in the end. The greater mystery was why so many _others_ remained, even when he gave them leave to go.

Of course the Night's Watch stayed. Their oath held them to such sacrifice. And his own men; the knights and lords who had given him their leal service and swords all vowed to remain or go at his command. The sellswords, he assigned to escort the non-combatants as far into safety as they could get, knowing they came to fight and plunder, not fight and die.

The rest, he assumed would leave as soon as he sent blunt word about the fate of the Wall to every manned castle and guardpost from the Bay of Ice to the Bay of Seals. His orders were to evacuate everyone unable to fight; the wounded, the women, every child who hadn't reached their twelfth year.

"Keep no man who will not stand until death," he dictated between clenched teeth. "We do nothing but buy time for the survivors until this Targaryen woman decides to engage whatever monster comes out of the cold. You will win no glory nor survive to tell of it, so begone if you have no taste for such an end."

Dolorous Edd nodded gravely. "Couldn't ask for anything better than being roasted alive by a dragon, really. Why, any of my brothers would beg for such a death, just to feel warm again. I yearn for it. Likely, I'll just fall off the Wall and get buried in ice."

But from Eastwatch came a raven bearing word from Asha Greyjoy and her band. " _The Ironborn stand with axes ready to crush any dragon or blue-eyed corpse! This woman dies facing north!_ "

From Oakenshield, the Blackfish wrote, " _The trout hasn't frozen yet. A dragon skull would be merry to look upon above the water gate to Riverrun; be sure to send someone to dig it out, your grace_."

From the Nightfort came word that three score had been sent south to safety, but over two _hundred_ remained. " _We have gained a score of canny crannogmen and ten bows of dragonbone from the treasure vaults of the Manderlys. Our archers are competing now to win a bow, and our dragonglass arrows shall be well poisoned. Tell our Lord of Manderly to feast in our honor_ , _we will be dining on dragon pie!_ "

So _many_ vowed to remain. _It was baffling_.

And when the wildling leader stood, the king was ready for another of his loud, profane tales, but not for what he actually said.

"Who dares question the courage of Tormund Giantsbane?" he roared, shaking his fist. "No crow will stand and watch Tormund creep away! No southron knight will poke his long stick at a dragon when Tormund can reach out and snatch it from the air!" He waved an arm in the air and slammed his fist shut. "I will stay by your cursed wall and laugh when it falls at last, but by then you will be calling me Tormund Dragonsbane! And King Iron-Prick here will be making me LORD Tormund Dragonsbane, and giving me some of your fancy steel small-clothes! But you know they won't fit over me huge member!"

Men roared with laughter as the king stood in what could only be called a state of complete shock.

But Tormund wasn't finished. "I will tell no man nor spearwife to stand or no. We are the Free Folk still, even though we gave our gold and our sons to Snow before the crows went and stabbed him. Not that it worked! Har-har-har! And this here king condemned Mance, and I did curse him to hell for it - even though _that_ death sentence didn't work either, did it? Seems to me you don't know the right way to make a man dead proper-like!" He laughed even harder and the king clenched a fist as his lip curled back. "But at least you rid us of fuckin' Rattleshirt! Har-har-har!"

The king's guards loosened swords in their scabbards.

But Tormund quieted and stood tall, crossing his massive arms. "But I'll stand by the Wall, or on it or before it and spit in the eye of any flying lizard, living or dead, and live forever in songs. For all the wildlings taken over all the years. For Hardhome, and Toregg who died on the shore there. And because this bloody king's done more to save our folk and avenge our dead than any warm-lander. Who stands with me?"

 Hundreds.

 _Thousands_.

"I know it gives little comfort, your grace. But this is merely a prophecy, and you well know how prophecies can be wrong."

Aye, he did. But this one...there were no visions in flames here. No scorching, seductive looks and murmured promises. Only that final line on the message. _I am sorry_.

It was said a league of assassins existed in which the custom was to apologize for each killing, so the last thing the victim heard was their murderer expressing how _sorry_ they were for this turn of events. It did not make them less dead.

No details of what exactly to expect came after the initial message. But all along the Wall, fire traps were laid along sight lines, trees cut back even further and dragged back for fuel. Arrows, harpoons and spears were stacked along walls and windows. Stones and even blocks of ice were covered in pitch and piled up for slings and trebuchets. Ground troops honed every blade and prepared pitch-dipped branches and torches to carry in off-hands if they lacked dragonglass.

Yet, they feasted every night as though they were traipsing across green fields on their way to a tourney. With nothing to save for, casks of wine were broached and meat added to every pot. The sick took heart; the strong grew braver. Small skirmishes were brushed aside, and ravens flew back and forth with no word of dragons or untoward numbers of the enemy. Instead, they remained full of boasts and oaths, and messages of praise...even if they were occasionally puzzling.

 _Bear Island stands with the King in the North and the Iron King_.

Northerners. There was no understanding them!

A raven fluttered to a landing along the merlon before the king. It said nothing, only looked at him, and then flew away again.

The king gazed out and spotted the darker line on the dark horizon just as the official lookout stationed above him did. From the ground, the distant, mournful sound of horns drifted up.

There was no need to give verbal commands. The king nodded and men ran, raised flags. Whistles and shouts sounded and the Wall became alive with creaks and crunches, the pounding of boots, the cries of ravens.

The king placed both hands on the frosted ledge before him, fingers tightening. They had debated what the boy meant by " _It will fall_." Was it _literal_ , and the giant wall of ice would actually collapse? if so, all of it, or merely one part? Would the dragon be the key to doing such a thing? Or did it mean the wall would _fail_ , and the army of the dead would breach it, work their way through or over it somehow?

And where should the king be for this final battle?

On the Wall was his final decision. They - the Black brothers, the wildlings, this army of his - they believed his presence on the Wall signaled strength. It was superstition and nonsense, but when the dead rose for ill and good, when a boy spoke through ravens and dragons flew and even maesters muttered about spells and magic, it was hard to say which nonsense ruled the short span of every day.

Also, with a Myrish glass and a system of signaling he could use such a position to guide the battle. And for one final ploy, should a risen dragon actually appear.

The king squinted, looked up at the sky. Nothing flew but the ravens heading to Queensgate and Oakenshield to tell their commanders he was under attack.

It was a moment of silence before chaos. He drew a deep breath and ground his teeth, trying to find a way to say what he'd tried to say so many times before.

"Lord Davos," he finally managed.

"Your grace?"

 _You have been like a brother to me_. No, for that was hardly much praise, seeing as his brothers despised and turned on him. _Your leal service has been appreciated_. Bland and meaningless as a rote courtesy, however true. Yet no poetic phrase came to mind, not that he would die with such flummery upon his lips.

His jaw started to ache.

Davos looked down for a moment and then up again, his head cocked just to one side, oddly like that blasted raven. "Ah. I see, your grace. May I be so bold...to say...it has been my honor to be your man. There is no other king in Westeros, not in the world, more worthy to follow. You have raised me from nothing and given my family a name and a legacy. If I die here today, I will be pleased to do it defending you or at least by your side, and regret only that I could not serve you longer."

The king looked away, perhaps at the distant enemy, at the flames flickering up along the designated killing ground. His head jerked up and down once, and then he turned his dark blue eyes back to his Hand.

Silent, he reached out and took Davos's left hand, the shortened one, into his own. He ran his fingers over the hard ridges where the gloves covered the stumps he'd made with a cleaver when he was barely a man.

"Still?" he asked. "After these? The red woman? Renly?" His grasp tightened and his voice turned into a rasp. "After Blackwater and your...your sons..."

"My sons died in a noble cause, and I will rejoice to see them again, if the gods grant it. But my remaining sons have my name and all you gave us. Devan is a knight, and he will remember you as his king." He smiled and laid his whole hand over the king's. "And you have been far greater in my esteem than my liege, Stannis Baratheon."

The king's eyes blazed for a moment, or perhaps it was the flare from the rising fires herding the legion of dead into the last trap the king had to spring. All along the battlements, men crowded and prepared their arms.

Another horn sounded, long and sonorous. Every living defender looked up into the distance, where a small shadow blocked out a wedge of sky, growing larger.

"Never leave my side, Davos Seaworth," the king growled, releasing their hands. The corner of his mouth twitched in what only those closest to him knew as his smile. "Impudent scoundrel that you are, I would not lose your company ever again. If perchance we survive, I would know your esteem...better. But for now, it seems we have pressing business." He bared his teeth as he eyed the growing, now clearly winged shadow.

Davos bowed his head and stepped back, signaling to men in the watch towers. The king's guards were shifting and gripping their weapons a short distance away, waiting to get him under cover.

The Iron King was having none of it. He drew his sword and its eerie, scarlet glow lit up the murky, winter darkness. Light cascaded around his body creating a glowing pillar with no shadow, a perfect beacon summoning that distant monster into the channel lined with dragonglass tipped scorpion bolts, where two precious Valerian steel blades were racked under cover for whichever swordsman might get close enough to use one.

"Defenders of the Wall," he shouted. Others took up his call, and it echoed along the towers and ramparts, through the sheltered platforms where men armed weapons and tracked the coming foe. It wound down the twisting stairs in multiple stages, through the rooms of the keep and down through the tunnels where the ground forces strapped their helms and shields in place and whispered prayers and oaths. Men cheered and roared as they hailed each other in his words.

"Go on," the king snarled, willing the creature to come to him. "Do your DUTY!"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I believe the most realistic heroic end for Stannis will be leading ground troops in the final stages of the battle with the Others. And that at least one dragon will die. Whether it gets raised is probably less likely, but they do raise horses and bears, so...wouldn't they LOVE to have their own dragon? Maybe it would breathe ice after death. Or, maybe there is some kind of ice dragon up there anyway, waiting to be awakened. That would be awesome. And by awesome, I mean seriously horrible for whoever has to fight it.


	12. Greenseer v2 - Winter's King

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I didn't come for courtesies, Lord Stark. You sent word I was needed to help end this war, as though I have not been the only king battling up here for months. The Wall has failed, the Targaryen invader has taken your own...cousin, is it? Her dragons scorch the dead and living alike, but still, the North is under siege, the dead continue to rise and mine own forces are too weak to afford the time and blood it cost for me to attend upon you. I have heard the dead are as far south as The Neck! What is it I must do which you could not describe to the fire priests through their flames or the crannogmen through their trees, or using a bloody raven and a note?" He looked at the vast and ancient weirwood and it's freakish, arterial array of leaves, the most vibrant color in this world of blinding whites, icy blues and the darkest of greys and blacks. "Is there a need for me to pray to your tree?"

 

The young Lord's eyes were white as the pristine snow banks of distant hills, streaked with tendrils of scarlet. His gelid stare made stout warriors look away as though they'd caught rays of sun, squinting and blinking tears that froze on their cheeks. He was small; still a boy and a cripple at that, his skin pallid and shadowed under a pieced-leather tunic. The simpleton giant had draped him with a bearskin, but the boy shrugged it off, seemingly unaffected by the wicked needling of winter's constant chill.

Davos Seaworth had seen terrible things that would haunt his nights for however long he had left to live. The evil green of wildfire stealing his sons lives; the birth of a noxious shadow form of his beloved king. He had felt the chill arms of the dead under the sea pulling at his body, and taken sword and fire against those he'd supped with one night and then saw return with blue eyes and cold hands the next.

But this boy who looked smaller than Devan, almost starved, yet sitting calmly with his useless legs unnaturally still, his face and head and throat and hands naked while strong, bearded men huddled under wildling great-coats or kept their fur cloaks wrapped tightly around armor...

He was unnerving. And although his strange white eyes seemed to flicker sometimes and his face tracked them as they walked through the wood, it had a forced feeling to it, like a man praising a dish he hadn't tasted.

 _He doesn't need those eyes_ , the former smuggler thought with a shiver that had nothing to do with the cold.

The king did not look away. He stared at the boy for long moments and then huffed a sound of exasperation. "You Starks are cursed with inaccurate pronouncements of death, it seems."

The boy grinned and for a moment almost looked like a boy. "Jon once told my brother Robb that we Starks were hard to kill. And look what happened to _him_. Welcome, King Stannis Baratheon. Thank you for coming. I'm sorry I can't take a knee for you."

"I didn't come for courtesies, Lord Stark. You sent word I was needed to help end this war, as though I have not been the only king battling up here for months. The Wall has failed, the Targaryen invader has taken your own...cousin, is it? Her dragons scorch the dead and living alike, but still, the North is under siege, the dead continue to rise and mine own forces are too weak to afford the time and blood it cost for me to attend upon you. I have heard the dead are as far south as The Neck! What is it I must do which you could not describe to the fire priests through their flames or the crannogmen through their trees, or using a bloody raven and a _note_?" He looked at the vast and ancient weirwood and it's freakish, arterial array of leaves, the most vibrant color in this world of blinding whites, icy blues and the darkest of greys and blacks. "Is there a need for me to pray to your _tree_?"

If the boy was offended by the king's tone, he didn't show it. "No, your grace. I don't think praying helps much. Do you?"

The king looked down at him and the corner of his mouth curled. "No, Lord Stark, I don't. Haven't since I was barely older than you. What is it you would have of me?"

"Perhaps we may speak alone, your grace? Hodor, fetch water and bring the elk haunch for the king's men."

 

***

 

The elk was fresh. They ate surrounded by small fires, tearing at the meat and comparing castle feasts and times of hunger with the same fierce competition.

"Now, the Manderlys, they know how to feast-"

"If you care for eels, maybe. Slimy things, no good unless you smoke them for days!"

"Gods, if I never again eat meat that's been salted, pickled or smoked, I'd die a happy man!"

"I'll kill ye tomorrow if ye like, a special blessin' just from me."

"A man needs to feel the juices run through his teeth. Dried beef and hard biscuits, that's not enough to fight on."

"We had fresh meat at Far Run, I didn't see you letting that rat blood run down your cheeks..."

They laughed and cursed as men do when they were like to live another day.

Davos hadn't felt so warm or so sated on food in...too long. He had started gazing toward the sacred grove after the tents were raised and the meal made. Melisandre told the king to burn the godswood at Storm's End. Did the trees of the North know this? Did they care? It was a disturbing thought. His hand went to the empty space where a pouch used to hang and he shook his head ruefully. Would he never cease doing that?

"Rat meat tastes best roasted," came the voice of the king from outside the ring of fires. "A little salt helps." When he walked into sight, the men scrambled to rise. He put a hand up, stilling them. "Cats need to be stewed. Vile creatures and a foul taste."

For a moment there was complete silence, broken only by the crackling of the fires. And then Ser Clayton nodded, his lips curled in brutish approval. "Aye, that's true!" he exclaimed, slapping a broad palm against his knee. "Cat meat is shit!"

"For that taste I yield to your experience."

After another moment of surprise, the gathered men laughed heartily. The king passed his sword to Willum, the Dornish lad who served as his squire for this journey. The boy went to hold his tent flap aside, but the king shook his head. "I will eat here."

Davos had already risen, and he turned to stare at his king. Making a droll remark and choosing to eat by the fire. Perhaps the boy had given him good news? A key to final victory?

"Will Lord Stark be joining us?" he asked, looking out into the darkness beyond their fires and torches.

"He has duties to perform."

"That little lad? Is there aught we could aid him with?" asked Jorran Hill. He was one of the few from the Westerlands who'd shown up at the Wall after the Battle for Winterfell, muttering about fell dreams driving him to the North. He was slender and twitchy, but could set a trap with some string and sticks and could track any living thing.

The king shook his head. "No. He needs nothing of us tonight."

"Did he...did he say anything that will give us hope, your grace?" Davos asked.

"Aye. But nothing can be done until we have daylight again." Willum brought the king's camp chair out and threw its fur over the back. He seated himself and looked up at Davos with a an expectant gesture.

"You were discussing cooking? My lord Hand saved us from our few roasted rats and stewed cats when he brought his ship to Dragonstone during the siege."

"Tell us!" Jorran demanded, looking over at Davos himself. "All I ever heard was about the Mad King and Rhaegar and Robert...begging your pardon, your grace, _King_ Robert."

Davos blinked and eyed his king again, and wished his fingerbones were present just to tell him this was some strange vision or dream. But the king was accepting a plate from Willum and directing the young man with quiet orders, and the rest of the men were looking at him with pleasurable expectation.

"Well...a story teller I'm not," he said, stroking his beard with one finger. "And truly, it is a tale of King Stannis..."

The king turned toward him again. "And you were a hero in it. Tell them, my lord."

Davos bowed his head. "As my king commands." He frowned a moment and then nodded. "I was with certain _gentleman_ of Bravos when I heard of the siege," he began. "He had...er... _found_.. some casks of salted fish among a cargo of greater worth and jested how they'd be worth gold on Dragonstone-"

"Found?" Ser Clayton laughed again. "Fell off a ship, did they?"

"'Twas only mannerly to collect them before they became a hazard," Davos said with a grave nod. The men laughed and he continued the story. In truth, he'd rarely told it. What was his pride and honor and the reason there was an onion on his sails was a mark of scorn for the better bred of Westeros nobles. Or it had been, until he came to the North. Accompanying the king on this journey were men who had leapt into battle back to back without a second thought; shared everything they had, faced the swirling mists that turned a battle from butchery into madness. They didn't have a single care for birth or wealth, save that both were good to have, in the way of stout boots and a sharp sword.

Amid laughter and praise, Davos looked at his king. Stannis had one leg kicked out before him, the other drawn back. He listened, and occasionally tipped his head back to look upon the vast bowl of the heavens above them. It was a strangely clear night, and the full moon was shimmering like a giant pearl. When had Davos ever seen his king look so...still?

 _There is some great plan_ , he told himself. _There is something we have missed, but now it will be done_. _He will see it done and we will go home at last._

When he finished the tale, Ser Clayton miming the finger chopping part with a dagger, another man started telling the story of the First Battle at Castle Black. Somewhere in the middle of _that_ telling, when Derwyn the wildling was describing how his cudgel broke against some poxy southron chest plate (he still refused to wear good armor, no matter how much they scavenged) Willum appeared with a steaming bucket in his hands. It gave off a delicious scent.

"Is that sweet wine?" Jorran asked, sniffing the air.

"From the king!" Willum said. The king waved a dismissive hand at the cheers, but they didn't last long as every man grabbed his cup or bowl and tossed the water or water thinly tasting of scant drops of sour red. They dipped out wine and drank it with deep, satisfied growls and sighs.

Davos took some, but only inhaled the already-dissipating steam from his cup. Ah, that was a scent of a bright, sunny day. Or a warm, boisterous tavern, filled with men who weren't bundled in layers of clothes and armor streaked with blood. It was Salladhor Sam and his salty olives, crusty bread and strong cheese. It was Marya, sharing a single cup with him in the home where she was called my lady and her touch upon his hand.

It wasn't just warm. It was _warmth_ , in all its guises.

But he did not drink. He went to his king's side. "Will you not have some, your grace?' he asked. He kept his voice soft.

The king heaved a sigh. "Wine was ever Robert's favorite dalliance," he said. "He didn't get it from our lord father, or Lord Arryn. I despise drunkenness, never needed my brother's bad example to teach me otherwise.

"Surely one cup, your grace? For the...warmth?"

In the flickers of firelight and the cold light of the moon, the king seemed like one of the statues Davos had heard of, in the crypts below Winterfell. " _All the Starks are stone in the dark," Rickon had told him. "They watch you, but they don't move, hardly, and we had to live with them because Theon said we were wards, but he killed everyone_..."

The boy said much Davos couldn't understand. But stone in the dark, yes. His king was even posed like some statues he'd seen. All he needed was a sword across his knees.

The king finally gave a short nod. "One. Watered."

"Let's have another tale," Jorran said, his hands cupped around his wine. "The Rat Cook!"

"I have one better - the Frey Pies!"

The king sipped cautiously from his well-watered wine and listened. Knowing him, no man volunteered a bawdy tale, but they all had stories of battle and cunning, surviving incredible odds. They talked of their brothers and lost friends, and the little wine they had was quickly finished.

When the king rose, they all did as well, even with his gesture to leave off the courtesy. "At daylight, I will go to Lord Stark again. It will not be necessary to attend me. But any man who would stand with me as king is...welcome."

"King Stannis!"

"I am ever your man, your grace!"

"My king, and long may you reign!"

Their voices ran into and over each other, jostling to declare the fealty already evidenced by their mere presence. Davos didn't feel the need to add his own. Indeed, the king looked toward him before ducking into his tent. And gave him a brief, solemn nod.

 

***

Daylight was a period when the black and blue shadows of night gave way to a dismal, grey sort of light that gave no heat or comfort. But it was light, and no man wanted to sleep through it. When the first dull streaks appeared on the horizon, Davos had been restive for some time. He was not surprised to find the faint glow of light in the king's tent.

 _Today_ , he thought. _Ah, by the Seven, let it be today. We've lost so much. Fighting for so long. Let us do what must be done and end this terrible war so all will see at last how he is the true and rightful king_.

When Stannis Baratheon stepped out of his tent, Davos felt his thoughts falter to a stop.

 _He is wearing his crown. I didn't even know he still traveled with it._ Red gold it was, with beautifully wrought points that looked like flames.

The king was dressed in his black woolen trousers and his heaviest surcoat, inky black leather, split at the hip for fighting and riding. Lightbringer was belted in place, and he was drawing his gauntlets on as Willum buckled the straps of his fur-lined cloak.

His crown. But no armor.

A chill ran through Davos Seaworth, as cutting as the howling winds atop the Wall. He drew his own cloak tighter. The other men were drinking their cups of elk broth, or mixing it with the corn or barley in their bowls. No one else seemed to feel or notice anything wrong.

The king eyed the horizon and seemed to give the sky a brief nod. He raised one hand and beckoned, and started walking back toward the center of the grove. Davos quickly fell into step behind him, and the other men tossed their meager breakfasts aside to join him.

The boy was exactly where they had seen him last, under the vast and ancient tree. In the faint and growing light, Davos could see strange markings or carvings on it, eyes and mouths. Some were higher than even the simple giant could have reached.

The king stopped when he was less than a long stride away from the boy. In the murky daylight, Bran Stark's eyes seemed more like the iridescent nacre from inside a seashell. He turned those eyes up to the king.

"Comes Stannis of House Baratheon," he said, his voice solemn. "The Kings of Winter welcome you."

"I am the _only_ living king," Stannis rested his hand on Lightbringer's hilt. "All men here know me to be so."

The boy turned to Davos and speared him with that eerie stare. "Davos Seaworth, do the Stormlands know this man as king?"

Incredibly, despite how unnerving it was, Davos felt a core of anger stir within him. "This is Stannis Baratheon, First of His Name, King of the Andals and the First Men, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms, and Protector of the Realm!"

The Stark boy nodded and turned his eyes again. "Jorran Hill, do the Westerlands know this man as king?"

Jorran's mouth gaped open, and he quickly glanced back and forth. Davos gave him a meaningful stare.

"Ah - aye. Aye. I'm from the Westerlands, and this is my king. And all that Lord Davos said?"

A few men snickered. The king didn't move, but remained standing straight and still before the boy.

If Davos had tried to put this troop of warriors together, he doubted he could have found a representative from each of the Seven Kingdoms. He didn't even know that Drejik had been Ironborn until Bran Stark asked him if Stannis was _his_ king.

Through the ceremony, the king never turned to face them. But it did seem to Davos that his shoulders straightened just a little bit.

Finally, when every man had his say - and a few insisted upon speaking even when their region had already been sworn - the boy lowered his eyes.

"Well comes Stannis Baratheon, First of his Name," he said. "King of the Andals and the First Men, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms, and Protector of the Realm. The Kings of Winter welcome you to their company."

 _What was that?_ Davos thought. _Whose company?_

The king gave a brief nod. "I will have _your_ words now, Lord Stark."

"On behalf of House Stark and the kings of our blood who came before, I, Bran Stark of Winterfell know _only_ Stannis Baratheon as our king. For the honor of my father Eddard, who died knowing you were the rightful king. For the blood of my brothers and sisters, shed by those who opposed you. For the life of my brother Rickon, restored by Lord Davos, Hand of the King. For the men of the Night's Watch whose lives you saved as the only king to come at their call. For the Free Folk you let into the lands to the south. For all these things, you are my one, true king, and I pledge fealty to your name."

"And after me?"

"Queen Shireen of House Baratheon."

"And what of the Targaryen woman? She also has a claim to the Iron Throne. And she has _dragons_."

Davos opened his mouth, wanting to protest. What was this about after him? Of course Shireen was his heir...but before he could finish that thought, the king's question about dragons overrode any other concern.

"Daenerys Targaryen will never sit the Iron Throne," the boy said, his voice hollow. "No one will. It is melted to slag in the ruins of the Red Keep, covered in black blood and green fire. The Mother of Dragons has her own destiny. Hers is the _Song of Fire_ , and fire shall be her end.

"The throne...destroyed?" Muttered Ser Clayton. "And the Keep besides?"

"Very well." The king finally turned to his men. "When you leave here...things will change. I have left instructions and letters in the satchel in my tent. As you have sworn your oaths to me, I charge you to press on with this war and put an end to the last armies of the dead and their masters. No more will rise after this day - or so I am assured." He glanced back at the boy. one eyebrow raised. The boy nodded.

"I swear it to be true, your grace. You will break the darkness and bring back the light, as was foretold."

Davos felt dizzy. "No. NO. Sire. No, you cannot..."

"It seems the Lady Melisandre was correct about king's blood." The king's voice was wry. "But she erred in the proper sacrifice. Apparently it must be the _actual_ king, not a _potential_ king or a _former_ king, and not a usurper. I am sure you feel vindicated, Lord Davos."

"Your grace, surely not, this is madness!" The other men started to protest as well. "No, King Stannis!" "How can we win without you?" "How can this crippled boy know?"

Stannis Baratheon raised a hand. "I have your oaths. Keep to them." He looked aside for a moment, parted his lips as he ground his teeth in annoyance. "It is a bitter sort of destiny that led me here. But the realm...requires this. I would have died a hundred times in the field defending my claim. But if it seems I shall never rule, at least I leave behind an heir and die serving my realm as a king should." He turned to Davos and put a hand out, gripping his shoulder.

"Davos," he growled. "Never has any king had a more loyal Hand, a better man at his side. Swear to me that you will see Shireen crowned. That you will give her that same honest counsel you offered to me, and the strength of your arm. Guard her from her enemies and spend your life wisely in her service. That is my final request of you, my Onion Lord."

Davos felt the crisp air on his cheeks before he realized he'd been weeping. He fell awkwardly to one knee. "I swear it, your grace."

"Then rise and be strong, my lord. For your king."

The king's grip on his forearm was strong as ever as he was raised up. The king met his eyes and gripped his shoulder one more time in silence, and turned back toward the tree.

Lightbringer slid soundlessly from its sheath. The red glow from the blade seemed sickly against the deep scarlet of the weirwood leaves. Thick roots spread out from the tree, some of the breaking the ground, free of the frost and snow coating everything outside the grove.

The king stepped forward and with one blow, drove his sword into the curve of a root. Then he stripped his gauntlets off and tucked them, neatly, absurdly, through his belt.

 _Of course,_ Davos thought. _My king, my king_.

Blood from his wrists ran down the fuller of the sword and spilled slowly across the root, then splattered across the whorls and protrusions of the smaller roots around the great one.

Stannis Baratheon cut deep.

He pulled his hands away from the sword and pushed himself to lean against the trunk of the tree next to the boy.

"Go on," he ground out. "Do your duty."

Davos turned away when the Stark boy bloodied his pale hands.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What other characters would sacrifice themselves for the realm? GRRM loves his complicated twists on morality and ethics and how people can change. But one thing that has always been true about Stannis is that he knows what sacrifice is. 
> 
> I could see him doing something like this. If necessary.


	13. Show v5 - What If It Worked? (some book elements)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For unlucky 13 - what if it DID happen and that sacrifice actually worked?

 

"You did not find Stannis Baratheon's body?"

Roose Bolton's voice was always low and reasonable. Some even said charming and affable, until they looked into his ice and smoke eyes and felt the chill of his stare. Amid the churning chaos in the disposition of Ramsey's returning army, most men didn't take his question as anything other than curiosity, perhaps surprise.

"Honestly Father, one bald southerner looks like another when they're trampled into the snow." The men around Ramsey laughed heartily. "I can send some of the sell-swords out tomorrow to collect all the heads if you like, and we can play _Find the False King!_ Then we can set them all around the walls for target practice...and to warn anyone who thinks of crossing the Boltons of Winterfell."

"And you took no prisoners. Not a _single_ man yielded?"

"Oh, was I supposed to?" Ramsey's eyes opened in false innocence and he laughed. "I was thinking of our resources, my lord! With all these new mouths to feed, why bring back some mangy Stormlanders? And I don't recall anyone yielding to me, do _you_ , Luton?"

"Not a single one, m'lord," his man immediately answered. "Loyal to the end, they were. Exceptin' those that came over to us the night before." Laughter ran through the men in the yard.

Lord Bolton stared at his son for a long moment in silence and then gave a nod. "Make sure the deserters are housed outside the walls. And yes, Ramsey. Send them to the battlefield tomorrow. See that you _find_ him. Stannis is - or was - not like his brothers."

"His brothers inspired loyalty! But he was a madman. Burning his own _child_ to some foreign god, fucking some magic fire-witch; the North should be grateful we eliminated him." Ramsey _tsked_ piously and then beamed and wiped one bloody glove along his equally gory jerkin. "Now, if you'll excuse me, Father, I'm sure my lovely wife misses me."

 

***

 

She was huddled under the furs and blankets, aching and grimy. She wanted to rise and cleanse herself, but the door was locked now and no one would bring her warm water until tomorrow. Sometimes, the chamber got so cold the water in her basin froze before morning. Only the faint warmth shed from the steaming waters shunted through the wall where her bed stood saved her from freezing as well.

Tonight, she wondered why she bothered. Surely, a death by freezing couldn't be that painful? Then she heard a faint sound and realized this was what woke her from the exhausted stupor she experienced instead of sleep.

Shouts. There were shouts, loud enough to pierce the closed shutters.

Pulling the heaviest fur around her, she cautiously got out of bed, hissing a little as she sat up. She made her way to the window and worked latches in the dark until she felt the clean chill of that pocket of air caught between the thick glass and the interior shutter. She could see lights in the courtyard below. It was difficult to discern what was going on at first - dull orange flickers of torches or lanterns where they should be but....yes...men _were_ moving below. But why was there no answering movement from the walls she could see in the distance?

She tugged and twisted at the window latch until it opened and fresh winter air blew her hair back. The window ledge was wet and dripping...

Dripping? Since when did ice melt at _night_? True, the previous day had been strangely warm; the yards were mired in slush and mud, servants tracking it everywhere, the rushes soaked before mid-day.

There was a man running below her window. "They're in the–" and then he fell and was suddenly silent.

And then, she heard another loud shout from _inside_ the keep.

She ran to her door and laid her ear against it. The thick oak muffled some of the sounds, but there was no question.

_There was a battle going on inside Winterfell!_

She dropped the fur and groped through her discarded clothing and dressed herself as well as she could. Stockings and under-gown and her gown . A scarf, she tied as a sash, and draped a shawl around her shoulders, knotting it in place. Over that, she pinned her cloak. If she had a chance to run...she would take it.

She pulled the bung reamer she'd palmed out from the hiding place under her mattress and pondered whether it was wiser to leave it where it was. If the door opened and it was Ramsey and he discovered she had it...

She slipped it into her sash, not even knowing what to hope for.

The noises and growing sense of chaos continued unabated. Out the window, smoke curled from different corners of the courtyard, and flashes of firelight showed men running in different directions and very little actual combat

What could be happening? Ramsey had bought Stannis Baratheon's sell-swords and turned them against him, the entire castle had been drinking to such a clever ruse since he'd ridden back, stinking of death and ambition.

Had he instead been _tricked_?

She dared to pray so. She eyed her bed again, felt for the bung reamer in her sash. She needed a better weapon.

 

***

 

Roose Bolton, Warden of the North, gave commands while being buckled into his armor. "Bring all household guards to the great hall, we shall defend there. _Where_ is Ramsey?"

As if in answer, the boy ran into the lord's solar, shirtless and streaked with blood that did not seem to come from battle wounds.

His father leveled a seemingly impassive stare at him. "Fetch armor for my _son_ ," he hissed at the servant to his right.

"Father! What the fuck..."

"It seems your sell-swords _had_ been sufficiently paid," Roose said. "But by _Stannis_." He tapped the shoulder piece of his mail and spread his arms for his sword belt to be buckled on. "Arm yourself and gather your men at once, we shall arrange a–"

There was dark grey smoke in the room, from a low fire in the great hearth. But a curl of coal-black smoke seemed to grow behind the Leech Lord, and in one smooth, undulating swirl unfurled into the rough shape of a man. The servant holding the sword fell back with a scream, and Roose looked down to his chest, his ice-chip eyes betraying slight surprise as a lance of black smoke broke through his chest armor and erupted in a splash of blood all over his legitimized son.

Ramsey froze as hot blood sprayed across his face, painting him with his father's life. Roose buckled like a puppet, falling to his knees and collapsing with loose-limbed abandon.

" _Mother-save-us, mother-save-us_ ," screamed the servant, crouched on the floor, his master's sword in a pool of blood.

"No. NO. No, Father, no, no, nononono...you useless _fuck_!" Ramsey screamed. He grabbed the dripping scabbard from the floor and drew the sword. With one savage thrust, he skewered the cowering servant and then whirled to the door. "Where are my boys?" he bellowed. "Damon! Alyn!"

A guardsman in Bolton livery ran up to him, a naked sword in one hand, and Ramsey grabbed him. "With me!"

The man seemed to nod, but his sword was coming up fast and Ramsey saw it and instantly reacted with a push. When the man flew back, off balance, Ramsey could see his unfamiliar face under the helm. The Bolton sigil on his chest was slashed and bloody. With a bestial roar, Ramsey heaved and brought his father's sword up and across, aiming for the man's neck. But he caught his shoulder instead, and the sword got stuck in bone, making him kick at the man repeatedly to get it free.

They were in _Bolton armor_. They were in the _keep_. They killed his _father_ , they were going to...get his _wife_! And his _Reek_!

Ramsey turned and ran, hacking at any man in his way, not even aware of they were true or foe. His boots slipped and slid in blood and it covered his body in streaks and gouts, but he knew only one thing. He needed to fetch out his _wife_. His wife, who gave him the North, his delicious, beaten wife, who he would skin by _inches_ on the battlements as soon as she bore him a son. He would teach men not to cross him!

A guard stopped in front of him, sword drawn. "Lord Ramsey!"

His sword was through the man before he could even think. "Fuck," he muttered, watching the man fall. It was one of his own guards. "Fuck, fuck, _fuck_!"

His wife's door was locked, as it should be, but who had the key? Servants...of course servants wouldn't be here. _Reek_! Reek had the key, but Reek was far away, and chained, and he couldn't even THINK so he bashed and battered at the handle with the sword's pommel and then kicked it again and again, until each jarring strike made his leg buzz like a hive of bees. The handle fell askew, the frame splintered and weakened, and at last it broke, and he pushed in...

And something clubbed him across the forehead.

Sansa didn't stop with one swing of the leg she'd worked off her bedstead. The bung reamer was perfect for gouging out the old pegs, and the heavy ironwood made a stout cudgel. But she couldn't trust one blow would work on a monster like her husband. So she drew back and struck again and again, not even hearing his cries over her screams of rage. He lashed out at her, but it was a weak thrust and he was unsteady. The sword only caught in her cloak and she pulled back, ripping the pin from her throat and letting the folds of cloth help carry the blade down. He growled and spat, blood running down his face, and stepped into the room to follow her. She was cornered, nowhere to go, but she brandished her club before her, ready to die rather than suffer one more day in his foul captivity.

And then Ramsey's face went blank. For a moment, she thought it was the flickers of light coming from the hall outside, but then realized there was another person behind him, a tall man in armor and a helm.

And there was a sword driven through Ramsey Bolton. His eyes turned down toward it for a moment, and then he fell forward, kicked by the warrior behind him.

She looked up at her savior. He glanced at her, his face dark and bearded under the helm, and cleaned his blade with a corner of his cloak before sheathing it.

"You are Sansa Stark?" His voice was raspy, worn. Cold and cutting as winter wind.

She nodded. "Yes, yes, ser, thank you..."

"The name of your dire wolf."

"My? Oh. Lady! She was _Lady_!" _Oh, gods, oh Mother, gentle Mother, he knows who I am!_

"Your bastard brother..."

"Jon! Jon Snow, he, he is older than me." Words spilled out in a rush, and tears flowed from her eyes. "His wolf is named _Ghost_ , he was white, white with red eyes. Jon went to the Night's Watch, I don't...does he live? Have you seen him?"

The man nodded and turned to men gathered behind him. "Gather everyone living and take them to the great hall. The bastard is here. Spike his head next to his father. Take their bodies and feed them to the dogs in the kennels. Then kill the dogs."

"At once, sire!" came the answer, and there were more orders echoing through the corridors of her home.

 _Sire_?

The tall man took the helm off and cast it aside. His hair was iron grey and scant over the dome of his head. His beard was streaked with grey and white, but there were still bands of inky, Baratheon black through it. And his eyes, when he turned them to her, were dark as the winter skies at dusk, midnight blue set in pools of smoke. They burned with a fierce and painful intensity, reminding her of nothing more than the chiseled and inked eyes of a statue she'd seen once of The Stranger. It was not mere malice that burned there, but a hot and inhuman _hunger_.

_This was Stannis Baratheon?_

She shivered and found her fingers had gone white clutching the bed leg.

"You will go to the great hall and tell me if there are any living who are loyal to Winterfell," he said, his voice flat. "The rest will be executed. Choose wisely. You may stay here and become my leal Lady of Winterfell and Warden of the North, or I shall deliver you to Lord Commander Snow at the Wall and see if he considers your life and freedom a worthy price to take the roles himself."

"Execute... _all_ of them, your grace?"

"The Bastard had no qualms executing every one of my men, even those who lay wounded and giving quarter as their life blood ran into the snow. He and his men ran down fleeing boys and pinned starving men to the ground with their lances while my men were forced to witness and do nothing." Each word seemed to come between his clenched teeth. "He thought he had us starved and lost and _still_ slaughtered the helpless. Idiot boy, he never thought to truly examine the men he thought he purchased from me, but they could do nothing to stop his slaughter. No, Lady ...Sansa. They die. They shall _all_ die."

She nodded, half a curtsey, and then felt her heart contract with a sudden compassion. Oh, why was she cursed with these feelings? Didn't she _want_ them all to die? But...

"Your grace...of course, you are correct, they must face justice. But...Lady Bolton...she is with child..."

His lip turned up. "She is a _Frey_. Likely present when Roose Bolton thrust a knife into your own brother, who called himself King in the North. I vowed vengeance for the Red Wedding. The Freys will be destroyed, every last one, And there will be no more Boltons born to this world. Eventually, I shall do the same to the Lannisters and any other house that opposes me. Whoever remains will bend the knee or suffer the same fate."

He turned with a swirl of his cloak and left her, growling orders to more men as he walked.

It wasn't until he was gone and men came to take Ramsey's body away that Sansa at last unlocked her bloodless fingers and let her makeshift cudgel fall to the floor.

Stepping carefully around the blood, she walked to the great hall, shoulders back and head up. Vengeance and brutal justice were better than remaining a weakened victim, a pawn in this horrid game. Lady of Winterfell, or reunited with Jon Snow? Jon would keep her safe wouldn't he?

 _No. No one would keep me safe_.

When she walked through the doors, unfamiliar men wearing a sigil of a heart in flames on their chests, shields or on pins were standing guard over the dozens of men, women and children huddled in groups throughout the chamber.

"My lady!" cried a laundress, her arms reaching out. "I swear I will serve the Starks! Winterfell! The North!" One of the guards backhanded her, and she collapsed, sobbing.

 _She was only a laundress._ But how many times had she washed the blood from the blankets, skirts and small-clothes? _What else could she have done?_ Resist doing laundry and _die_ for it, flayed and strung up in the courtyard?

And poor Walda! He would order her death and that of her innocent babe? Walda was foolish, perhaps, but had done no injury to anyone!

But if her babe lived, a child of Boltons and Freys might rise to rule Winterfell and the North. Could take her father's seat, amid the ancient, carved dire wolves... _No! NEVER. I would see them all dead first, I'd kill it myself!_

Chasing that thought was an immediate, stomach-clenching bolt of horror. _It's monstrous and wrong, but what else is there to do? Yes, I do want vengeance, but...am I truly just a weak, stupid girl who doesn't have the courage to take it?_ She couldn't possibly walk among them and choose who would live or die. She would go to the Wall, yes, and leave this all behind her.

The king was present, divested of the anonymous armor, crowned and scowling as he stood by her father's seat. Next to him was a beautiful woman gowned in scarlet, her long, burnished copper hair free behind her. About her throat was a stunning ruby necklace that almost seemed to be faintly glowing in the torchlight of the room.

Sansa shivered again, watching them. She knew her houses and names. Stannis Baratheon was married to a Florent, said to be plain. This was the fire priestess some gossiped about in King's Landing. They said she burned his enemies alive, burned images of the Seven to make some magical power for him. It sounded blasphemous and horrible. The High Septon had called it _abomination_.

 _Joffrey_ was an abomination. Cersei embraced her own brother and bore him children and set them on the throne. That brother had killed the king he'd been sworn to defend, had murdered _Jory_ and the other Winterfell men trying to guard her father. It was an abomination that saw her good and honorable father on his knees, confessing treason while surrounded by actual traitors and getting murdered, his blood flowing across the steps as Baelor's statue looked on, unheeding. Abomination was her brother and mother at a wedding, _slaughtered_ after taking bread and salt. It was Littlefinger and the Tyrells, using her to kill Joffrey, Petyr murdering harmless Dontos and her mother's mad sister, and leaving her here with the man who betrayed her family, forced into a marriage to his viscous bastard when _no one cared_! No one else came to save her! The old woman said the North _remembered_ , but where was the North now? Not in this room, where the last Baratheon had summoned her. 

Against the wall, clapped in chains and shaking like a rag-doll, was Theon Greyjoy. _There_ was abomination. Her father's ward, a foster brother to her, who'd picked her up as a child and whirled her around, who jested and hunted and sported with Robb, then turned on him. _Theon_ betraying the home he lived in, murdering children...

Children. _Her brothers_. If she went to the Wall and Jon did not forsake his vows - and how could he, as Lord Commander? - then who would search for her brothers, or her sister? Who would know how to rebuild her home, the ancestral home of the Starks going back to Brandon the Builder and ages lost to history? Who would make the tomb effigies for her own parents, for Robb?

The woman in red was looking at her. There was a warm smile on her face, but her eyes were sharp. Beside her, the king seemed dark and terrible; drawn tight as a dragonbone bow, shadowed as though he wore a cloak of ash and smoke.

But they _lived_. And they came to Winterfell, looking for her, bearing word of her brother, prepared to give her home back to her after she'd lost everything. They were _strong_ , as she had to be. What terrible prices had they paid for their power?

Could they be worse than the pain and indignities she'd borne these past few years? Fire and shadows might be merciless. But who had shown _her_ mercy? Who had shown _any_ of the Starks mercy?

Raising her head, she walked to them as befit the Lady of Winterfell and Warden of the North. When the king turned his dark and terrible gaze upon her, she curtsied and pledged her loyalty.

And when she found out what he and the priestess Melisandre done to end the storms that battered his starving army, to further the ability of his stealthy sell-swords to make Ramsey believe they came to him willingly, to hide them among the genuine Bolton troops with none the wiser and to somehow slay Roose in her father's solar before Ramsey's eyes...

She politely excused herself. And ran. And she sobbed. Alone in the old broken tower, she sobbed for a child she never knew, for a life she'd never have again, for every innocence lost. She lit a candle and let it sit on the dusty floor, staring into the flame until she had nothing left inside.

And she walked back to her home and her hall and told the hollow-eyed king and the red lady who was his shadow queen which of the prisoners should live and which should die. Winter was coming. And mercy, it seemed, had no place in the cold.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again - if you're going to destroy a character, don't build him up with a nice little father/daughter scene and some grammar humor and then just dump years of character development into a "it was ambition" misread and THEN remind us that it doesn't work. 
> 
> I don't know why they took the few times when Melisandre's magic does work out of the show. It would have cost little to have Lightbringer glow. Or, to remember to include Balon in the whole leech scenario so it didn't look like coincidence. We know Melisandre gets things wrong, we know she can play tricks (if you read her single POV chapter, it's all in there.) But her ability to do some, limited, genuine magic seems to be part of the return of the dragons and magic to the world. It's part of what makes Stannis so tragic, really. Even the magic he gets is second-class. She is the Proudwing of magical mentors! 
> 
> So, what if sacrificing Shireen actually WORKED? What if it melted the snow, stopped a blizzard, made it possible to make the Boltons believe half of Stannis's army was gone, and a significant number just happened to come over to their side because...they had cookies. Because they heard the Boltons were such great people to work for. That the magical glamour could hide Stannis and some of his best fighters inside the Bolton troops. Oh, and Shadow!Stannis could go and ninja Roose, who Stannis would have correctly identified as the more dangerous opponent. 
> 
> OK. So, now we have an empty-eyed, merciless man who has killed what he loved to win a war necessary to secure his armies so he can go back north and stand against the Long Night and the Armies of the Dead. But in this world, up against people who have slaughtered thousands, betrayed and destroyed family and allies, deliberately sowed chaos and horror just to set the stage for their own favorite saviors to come in and look like they're heroes...this just makes him another cold-hearted player of the game. And STILL the only one who is even paying attention to the great war that's upon them. So, D&D? SUCK IT.


	14. Show v6 - He Who was Notoriously Without Mercy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> My first drabble.

The 1000th Lord Commander of the Night's Watch leveled his dark blue eyes upon the prisoners. A few shook, even though the day was warm enough for the remnants of the Wall to weep. He recognized two - a knight with wirey white hair and a strong jaw, and a spindly youth with a pinched and dour mien.

"The Lord Commander you betrayed was a merciful man. I am not. Mutiny shall not be forgiven while I hold the Wall. However, I will grant you a slight mercy. I shall not hang you."

He turned to his steward.

"Devan, fetch me a block."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I thought I'd try a story about how he wound up there, but ...I kept turning to Mole Town (http://archiveofourown.org/works/1037656) It's so well done, it's gotten in the way of my imagining an alternate version, LOL. 
> 
> But no matter how it happens, if we're talking about the Show AU, this would feel SO GOOD. 
> 
> I think he'd save Olly for last.


	15. Show v7 - No Glory

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Same set-up as the final scene in the show. But what if Brienne's swing was interrupted by a couple of Winterfell escapees?

**Show v7 - No Glory**

"Do you have any last words?"

The king was tempted to ask her whether she knew what the term " _rightful_ " meant, but decided it was hardly a worthy discussion. He had a choice between dying from blood loss, cold, or some eventual Bolton foot soldier he wouldn't be able to kill...unlike the last dozen or so. No doubt she would make it quick.

"Go on, do your duty," he sighed. It mattered little. He didn't even give her the courtesy of a glance. Anyone who believed his conceited, selfish, disloyal brother should have been king - let alone was the _rightful_ king! - was hardly someone he wished to engage in his last moments.

And it was that slight twist of his head that allowed him to see the two figures coming up from behind her. Free-fighters, from their outlines against the snowy trees. The Boltons were taking no prisoners nor even stripping the bodies. _Fools_. Yet he was the one being executed in the snow by some deranged, love-sick giantess.

She had her tastelessly overwrought sword - Valyrian steel, no doubt - upraised an an absurd angle, and started to make some bizarre war cry. But it was interrupted by a woman's scream.

"Stop that at _once_ , you _monster_!" came a voice from behind the Tarth woman. Her swing interrupted, the sword thudded into the tree a good two handspans above the king's head.

The taller of the two free-fighters took off a domed helmet with long cheek guards and waves of brilliant auburn hair fell down around her face and shoulders. "Are you mad?" she inquired, storming through the snow and skirting the dead serjeant sprawled across her path. "Why are you murdering an unarmed man?"

Her companion, a hunched over figure bundled, as she was, in what looked like scavenged armor and extra cloaks, reached out a hand to stop her and made a whimpering sound. "La-lady. My lady, please, no, please..."

But she made her way next to the king's would-be executioner and stared her straight in the eyes. "What kind of a woman are you? What are you even _doing_ here?"

"Lady Sansa! I..what - how did you escape?"

"That's none of your affair," the young noblewoman snapped. "And you can just kill me, if you have any intention to bring me back there!" She tore a slender sword - the type one might give well-born noble lad - out from the scabbard belted around her hips. She was dressed in soldier motley, and it was good she was tall enough for the breeches. But the sword belt wrapped more than twice around her.

"Of course I won't bring you back there!" Brianne of Tarth cried. "I came here to rescue you!"

"By killing wounded, unarmed men from the army that attacked my _captors_?"

The king leaned his head back against the tree and coughed out a low, harsh laugh. His ribs ached with it, but it was well worth the pain. "It seems Lady Sansa didn't require aid from either of us."

"Lady, my, my lady, we have to _go_ , we have to _run_ , please, he will be coming, he will _miss_ us, please!" The gaunt man with her clutched his own arms nervously, looking from side to side in terror.

"No, Theon, I am not leaving this brave man to be murdered by this monster."

Brienne of Tarth pointed at the king. "This is not a brave soldier, this is Stannis Baratheon, who murdered–"

"The KING? You were going to murder t _he king_?" Sansa immediately put herself directly between them. "Littlefinger was right about you, you...you are evil!" She stubbornly held her own little blade before her and then stared at Brienne's still bared sword. "You even have Joffrey's _sword_! From his wedding, where you bowed to him and wished him well!"

Brianne hurriedly sheathed the blade, a blush rising through her wind burned cheeks. "It is _not_ his blade...it was..."

Sansa narrowed her eyes. "I was _there_. Tywin Lannister gave it to him, he used it to hack a book apart, a book Tyrion gave him. You returned the Kingslayer to the court - was this your reward?"

Brianne opened her mouth and then pressed her lips closed. Sansa turned to Theon and snapped, "Get something I can use for bandages, the king is wounded. Try to find someone's tunic that isn't...too bloody. And a belt, or some cord to hold it on. _Do it, Theon_. Now."

"You should let her kill me," the king finally said, grinding his teeth. "I cannot help you. I have _nothing_. Let her take her vengeance. You must go to Castle Black, on the Wall. Tell your bastard brother what you can of the defenses at Winterfell. Perhaps he will..."

"You know Jon, your grace?" Sansa turned to him and knelt in the snow.

The king sighed. "Aye. I took my army north of the Wall and saved him and his brothers and Castle Black from ten _thousand_ wildlings. I offered to make him...Lord Stark, Warden of the North...if he would pledge his sword to me. Blasted boy became Lord Commander instead. So I had to come south to...try and reclaim Winterfell." He ground his teeth as every deep breath to speak shifted his aching bones and sinews. "Useless to you now. Best to hide...cut your hair. _But go to the Wall._ I loaned him my entire fleet to move refugees from the Wall, to bring in more troops. He can find a place of safety for you."

Sansa stared at him for a moment. "You saved Jon? And the Night's Watch?"

The king nodded with a weary shrug. "It was my duty as king."

Sansa turned to Brienne and glowered at her. "And you want to _kill_ him?"

"My lady, you don't understand. I was in King Renly's kingsguard. Your mother was with me the night he was murdered by a shadow with Stannis's face! Even your mother swore to never hinder me from my vengeance..."

"My mother, who is also dead. _Everyone_ you want to protect is dead, and you stand here with Widow's Wail in your hand and expect me to _trust_ you?"

There was a crashing sound further in the trees, and then Podrick and Theon fell in a tangle of limbs, rolling across the trampled and blood stained snow as they grappled.

"I got him, my lady! I got him!" Podrick exclaimed.

"Podrick Payne!" Sansa stood up, her eyes blazing. "What are _you_ doing here?"

"Lady Sansa?" The lad raised his head and stared at her. "Oh! Is that Stannis? Did you do it all, my lady?" He turned and beamed at Brianne. "You killed Stannis _and_ rescued Sansa? I've been looking for you for hours, ever since I saw the candle!"

Brienne's brow furrowed as she stared at Sansa. "You...lit the candle?"

"That was your _plan_? Yes, I lit the candle! Even though the first time I tried, it only got a kind old woman tortured, flayed and _killed_. And when Ramsey marched out with all those troops, of course I tried again. I _stupidly_ thought someone might actually come save me while the battle acted as a distraction!"

"I was going to..."

Sansa met Brienne's eyes, and the warrior maid lowered hers first.

"Podrick, let Theon go. Theon, stop trying to fight. Give me these." Sansa took the wadded bundle from Theon's hand and returned to the king's side. "I apologize your grace, but I'll have to examine your wound."

The king shook his head as she gently probed his leg. "Leave me," he repeated. "I have nothing to offer you."

"You came with an _army_ to free my home, and lost everything in the attempt," Sansa said, her voice slightly shaking. "You saved my brother and the Night's Watch. The Lannisters - Cersei, Tyrion, even Tywin, _feared_ you. I prayed Joffrey would run to meet your blade and in my dreams, you killed him a hundred times." She wrapped the bandage tightly around his calf, then layered another over it. She met his eyes, her light blue to his dark. "They were all liars and traitors, but they told everyone it was my father who was the traitor because he knew you were the rightful king."

She turned to Brienne, standing awkwardly with Podrick. "I prayed during the battle of Blackwater that King Stannis would come and free me and kill them all, but Lord Tyrion...was too clever. I name you _liar_ , Brienne of Tarth. You have Joffrey's sword and Tyrion's squire. You say you came to rescue me, but when I called for help, where were you? Trying to murder the rightful king, after he lost his whole army to try and save my home. Go away. I want nothing from you."

Brianne drew her hands into fists in frustration. "You don't understand. He is a kinslayer! He murdered his brother Renly with magic!"

"And I killed my own father because I was a selfish fool," Sansa replied, her voice bitter. "This war does not lack for kinslayers. I do not see how magic is any worse than poison, a crossbow bolt or a flaying knife. A dead man is still dead. Lord Renly was in rebellion against his rightful king. The Lannisters _rejoiced_ to hear of it, knowing they would bleed each other instead of coming to take King's Landing together. If Renly had been a true brother, none...none of this..." She caught her breath and closed her eyes tightly. "And if I had been a true _sister_ , I'd still have Lady, and perhaps it would have all been different."

When she opened them again, her face glowed with determination. "I will not leave the king to die here. Go away and leave me be, or give up your precious vengeance and try to be useful for a change."

Brianne fumed and her color rose. Her hand kept straying to the hilt of her sword and Podrick looked back and forth from her to Sansa while Theon bared his teeth and growled at the squire.

The king ground his own teeth and pushed himself further up against the tree. Now that his wound was bandaged and out of the snow, he could feel sensation coming back to the limb. He sighed. "Lady Sansa," he finally said. "Tarth has the right of it. If there are gods, I am damned. If not, I have no strength to offer you. No army, no safety, no wealth. I...thank you for your..." He took another breath, scanned the dark sky above them. "Your fealty. But in truth, I am unworthy of it."

"You have it just the same, your grace," Sansa said. "Theon, the king will need a heavy cloak. Two would be better. And if you see anyone with fur boots, take them." She looked at Brienne with an eyebrow raised. "Will you be helping or hindering me?"

Brianne folded her arms. "I would aid you."

"Then swear you are giving up your vengeance. Or go back to the Lannisters. Although I hope Tommen will not put you in _his_ kingsguard. He was a sweet child."

The king barked out another harsh laugh. Despite the agony of his wounds, the exhaustion and the grief and the sheer crushing weight of fury and regret and that emptiness where once lived the only things that gave him joy in his bitter life. The girl was strong, bold. Brave.

Like her bastard brother.

Like Davos.

Like his own...

He closed his eyes, letting the force of his grief wash over him like a colossal wave in a storm, strong enough to pulverize everything that had meaning. All that anchored him to life was gone. _He_ destroyed it all. How could he even face his faithful Onion Lord?

 _Yet I must_ , the king realized. _He should know. He should hear it from me that he had ever advised me rightly, that his loyalty and obedience were not at fault. And if he despises me for it, so will it be. I may die at the Wall just as easily as I can manage it here._

_I have no wife. No lands. No children. I have no crown and my glory is behind me, soiled by my crimes._

_The Wall is where I should die. It seems I have made my life into their bloody oath_.

He opened his eyes to see Brienne glaring at him with a furious intensity.

"I will...I forego my vengeance," she said, growling out every word. "Podrick, get the horses."

Horses? Perhaps they might make it then. He was surprised when Lady Sansa knelt next to him again, lightly touching her hand to his shoulder.

"I will never forget what you have done, your grace," she said.

He nodded, a quick jerk of his head, unable to speak. It was something, just the glimmer of hope that he could help restore her to her brother, perhaps help the North come together for the great war no one else seemed to realize was coming.

But her kindness was a scourge instead of a balm.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I listened to a podcast where the speaker was very convinced someone was coming up on Brienne from behind. The show producers have confirmed Stannis is dead, so thank goodness no one needs to waste a year hoping for a better ending. But I could at least imagine one.
> 
> Could Stannis actually do penance for his deeds? I don't know. He's so rigid and absolute, I can see him being one of those annoying people who rejects mercy and forgiveness because he is determined to punish himself. So, yes, this could be a way to get him into the Night's Watch. Or, simply to be up there, wading into battle and hoping to die every single time.


	16. Futurefic v2 - Before the Dragon Queen (B)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Give me one reason why I should let you live."
> 
> The king could almost feel Davos tensing behind him, but never took his eyes off the absurdly dainty looking girl perched awkwardly on a camp chair piled high with furs. She had the classic Targaryen look, with her spun-silver hair and lavender eyes. And unlike the other Targaryen who was now claiming victories across the Crown-and-Stormlands, she had the great beast outside to verify her parentage.
> 
> \------
> 
> Someone reading these asked if I had any idea what might happen if Dany and Stannis met to parlay, if both were ready to compromise. But the best compromise I could imagine from both would be to set aside their eventual struggle in favor of the true enemy beyond the wall, and hope the other one died before they had to war with each other.

**Futurefic v2 - Before the Dragon Queen (B)**

The king had only occasionally spared any thought to genuine dragons, even when surrounded by images and carvings of them at Dragonstone. And he certainly hadn't wasted an idle moment contemplating what they _smelled_ like.

Scorched horsemeat, mostly. And a sharp, metallic scent like iron ballast bars, steaming salt water as they dried in the sun.

The creature was warm. All about it, the ground was mud - without the deep snows blanketing the land around the Targaryen encampment. There were a few blackened, splintered bones scattered about.

The black's head was almost as long as a man; its scales gleamed in the dismal light of a Winter day. And its vast, dark eye caught the movement of the man before it and slowly, it unfurled its long neck and thrust the vast, triangular head forward, mouth parting to show a jagged slash of teeth.

Stannis Baratheon knew a sensible man would be terrified. A spasm ran through his shoulder, arm and hand; the natural reaction of any armed man to such a creature. But that faint impulse to draw his sword was met instantly with a realistic assessment of the danger. He remained perfectly still as the dragon seemed to... _sniff_ him.

The horsemeat smell was worse coming directly from the heat of its mouth. And when the king turned his head slightly away from the plume of decay, fire and blood in that scalding breath, the dragon reared back and then shot its head forward in a roar that sent brave men to their knees...or running in terror.

***

Just a bit earlier.

***

"Give me one reason why I should let you live."

The king could almost feel Davos tensing behind him, but never took his eyes off the absurdly dainty looking girl perched awkwardly on a camp chair piled high with furs. She had the classic Targaryen look, with her spun-silver hair and lavender eyes. And unlike the other Targaryen who was now claiming victories across the Crown-and-Stormlands, she had the great beast outside to verify her parentage.

"You need my troops," he said. "You have dragons, at least one I have seen. But if you still have command of three, still they cannot fly the length of the Wall, the span of the North and the Land of Eternal Winter at the same time. They can't even know where to go without the intelligence my forces gather."

She shook her head with a mocking smile. "I could have you replaced."

"You may certainly try." The king looked about her vast and ill-insulated tent at her council of advisers. "I see a Northerner here with you, perhaps the exiled Ser Jorah Mormont would care to take my place. The Lady Alysane Mormont is one of my battle commanders. They can reminisce about the days when he sold men into slavery rather than do his duty and send them to the Wall, where they could be useful to the realm."

Mormont, bearing a hideous brand mark on his face, looked furious.

The king continued. "Your... _kinsman_ , Prince Jon or however he styles himself, carries the Mormont blade, Longclaw. It was given to him by Ser Jorah's father, since his son the slaver could hardly bear their ancestral sword. Prince Jon's _uncle_ , Lord Eddard Stark was Ser Jorah's liege lord and had condemned him to death. The Northerners in my army might not take well to his command." He dismissed Ser Jorah with an idle gesture and gave the Targaryen a slight nod. "But perhaps some may accept him. Memories are short and turncloaks abound. However... the wildlings also share a distaste for slavers, especially since many of their women and children were swept away by slavers from Braavos and Volantis. I do not know what chaos you left in your wake throughout Essos, but apparently there is a sudden, great demand for more slaves."

Daenerys had lost her slight smile as she listened. "I have many commanders, Baratheon."

"I don't doubt it. Perhaps Lord Lannister would suit." The king nodded in the dwarf's direction. " _Your_ family had Eddard Stark murdered, his daughter publically shamed, tortured then forced to marry you. I bear unfortunate news, Lord Lannister. Lady Sansa has asked me for a writ of annulment and I have granted it. It seems she would rather die than see you upon the seat of her forebears knowing who planned the famed Red Wedding where her mother and eldest brother were betrayed and slaughtered against all customs of hospitality and fealty."

Tyrion gripped his wine goblet and lowered his head. "That was none of my doing. That was my father, and Bolton and Frey."

The king gave a scornful snort, but his eyes gleamed in the lamplight. "I would send you to seek the Boltons and Freys to confirm what you say, but there are none of the former and few of the latter remaining alive. In that, I took a leaf from your father's book. It is clear you are his son, advising your ruler as he once advised King Aerys as Hand, and then the boy Joffrey, a Lannister bastard. You were _his_ Hand as well, despite knowing he was none of Robert's get."

He paused and turned back to the Stormborn. "Your mercy is quite generous toward Lord Lannister. You _do_ know it was Lord Tywin Lannister's bannermen who murdered Princess Elia and her babes? While his eldest son earned the name Kingslayer by stabbing King Aerys in the back while his father's army sacked King's Landing. Not every ruler would be so merciful to the family that betrayed them and murdered a helpless woman and her children."

"We're all very grateful for the history lesson, Lord Stannis," Tyrion Lannister said, clapping his hands together. "Yes, yes, I've come from an awful family. But _I_ am here with Queen Daenerys while _you_ oppose her. And perhaps you might turn your attention to the great, fire-breathing monster outside and consider the current situation. You cannot fight dragons _and_ the creatures beyond the Wall. Be sensible and bend the knee so we may all be united in a single force."

"I see no sense in bending the knee to a woman who comes late to a war and land she does not know, leading armies of slaves and savage Dothraki across the north, in winter." The king shook his head. "I am here to save my kingdoms; you are here to invade them. I do see _one_ dragon here, although I was led to believe there were three. Prince Jon is far to the north beyond the Wall with one, is he not? Where is the third?"

"Hunting," the queen said. "My dragons are _always_ hungry."

If she intended her words to sound threatening, they failed. "Then they shall join the inhabitants here. As the Starks would note, it is _winter._ All are hungry. And every man your creatures eat leaves more to swear vengeance upon you. Every sheep or horse lost to feed a dragon takes meat from a soldier at the Wall or fleeing refugees to the south."

He grimaced and ground his teeth.

"I've been waging war _here_ while thieves and bastards play their games in the southlands. While some _other_ silver-haired invader, this one calling himself Prince Aegon, has brought sell-swords, Dornish rebels and plague as he marches for King's Landing. _Greyscale_ is killing my subjects because of yet another Targaryen, and you dare ask me to bend the knee? I do not recognize _his_ claim, either." The king spat those words with one hand formed into a tight fist. "His turn will come."

"That boy is no kin of mine!" Daenerys insisted. " _I_ am the last of my blood, and he is some mummer's trick. The Iron Throne is mine by right. It was your _brother_ who usurped it."

"Oh, is this Aegon a false Targaryen? The realm seems suddenly wealthy in bastards and orphans claiming kinship. I am sure it's easy to be fooled. I had even heard Lord Lannister here was fooled for a while and advised the boy." He gave Tyrion a slight curl of his lip. "Or was _that_ your father as well?"

"You go too far, Baratheon."

The king nodded tightly. "Aye, a _trueborn_ Baratheon, which is why the Iron Throne is _mine_ by right. My brother Robert took the throne by conquest _and_ by virtue of our Targaryen blood."

Daenerys frowned. "What do you mean?"

The king raised his eyebrows at the Imp in an exasperated expression. "Have you told her nothing about the families and bloodlines of the kingdoms she seeks to win _back_?"

He directed his attention back to her. "My grandmother was Rhaelle Targaryen, your father's aunt. My grandsire Ormund served as Hand to your grandsire, Jaehaerys, second of his name **,** and died serving him in the War of the Ninepenny Kings. His only son, my father, served as a page in the Red Keep. King Aerys often addressed my father as _cousin_." The king clearly didn't approve of such familiarity. He continued, "Aerys sent my parents to Volantis to find a bride for your brother Prince Rhaegar. They perished upon their return."

The queen turned her curious eyes upon her advisers. Tyrion shrugged. "Half the noble families in Westeros have bred with the other half."

"Some bred closer than others."

Despite the tension in the tent, a ripple of laughter and quickly smothered snorts ran through the witnesses. The heir to a lineage rich with incestuous pairings did not laugh.

"If what you say is true, should not your former allegiance to the rightful king condemn you now?"

"My elder brother was the _rightful_ king, by conquest and the very same blood you believe makes you queen. As he left no trueborn children, the throne is mine. You are a stranger here, coming as an invader while the realm is at war with a foe you know not. If your turncloaks and slavers advise you to destroy me and engage my armies instead of the enemies coming out of the far north, you will be weakening or eliminating the realm's greatest defense against the armies of the dead." He raised an eyebrow. " _And_ killing your second cousin, if blood truly matters to you."

Her advisers all began to speak, each one addressing her by a different title. She kept her faint scowl and raised a hand to silence them. A crafty smile grew slowly across her comely face. "There is a way to see if you have any claim due to your Targaryen blood."

***

And thus, the steaming, fetid plume of dragonbreath. The roar was equally offensive to the ear, a screech followed by a deep, sonorous rumble as it trailed away.

The king waved a hand briefly before his face and folded his arms. The dragon jerked its head back and then slowly eased it forward toward him again.

Yes, it was _definitely_ sniffing at him. Like a dog. The king watched the sinuous movement of the creature's muscles, the play of light along the scales, and the way spines rose and fell with each breath.

"Well? What else must I do?" he asked, keeping his eyes on the beast.

There was only silence behind him, so he turned. The panic of a few more onlookers as they threw themselves backward or down was what made him twist to look back. The dragon had reared up by then and stretched its neck out - and the king was buffeted by a tremendous roar even louder than the first. The dragon's jaws were almost as tall as he was when they gaped open.

The king coughed in disgust and waved his arm before his face again. "Stop that noise," he barked. The dragon screeched out a short and harsh response... and then turned its head over one shoulder to nudge and rub a spot there, ignoring him.

The king watched for another moment and then turned for an answer to his question. He found Daenerys Targaryen, the Stormborn, Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea and Mother of Dragons staring at him with an offended and startled look. Davos, several paces away, almost as pale as she. The knights who served as his guard were behind _him_ with their hands still locked upon their sword hilts. And off to one side, Tyrion Lannister was massaging his forehead, the very picture of vexation.

"What?" Stannis Baratheon snapped.

***

"That will be a tale for the ages, your grace," Davos said as the king's company began their journey back to the Nightfort.

The king gave a snort. "Hardly. I didn't slay the creature, though its breath was like to do as much damage as any fire it may summon."

Ser Godry laughed from his place to the king's left. "That roar was like to make a man soak his breeches. And those teeth!"

"It's an impressive beast," the king admitted. "I know men have flocked to her banner just for the chance to _see_ the creatures. It must be a wondrous thing, to mount a dragon." His voice was almost wistful for a moment, and as if he realized it, he pressed his mouth shut and drew the reins tighter to collect his mount's already satisfactory gait.

His Hand knew what his king was remembering.

_She had vowed the right sacrifice would raise dragons from the very stone of his keep. An ill-born boy, his own nephew. A boy Davos stole from him. Stole from the Red Priestess and her fires. Could she have brought life from stone as well as flesh?_

Davos kept silent as the king brooded. There was no need for him to speak aloud the losses and tragedies they had both suffered.

"But it _is_ a beast, and ill-trained, if trained at all," the king finally said, shaking his moment of sentiment from him with distaste. "Seeing it up close was...useful. Despite the stench."

"If I may say so, your grace, it was a fine agreement you have made with...the lady." Davos wondered how to best refer to her.

It had been clear neither she nor his king would relinquish the titles they bore, nor bend the knee to the other. But after hours of negotiation, they had agreed to a truce and to wage war together against the greater enemies coming out of the cold lands.

And what an odd collection of warriors and nobility gathered in that tent. A king and queen, certainly. But also, exiles and men believed to be dead, former slaves and a crabber's son. Some born to lead, others born to squabble and suffer in the dirt and mud but raised by fortune and the blessings of more gods than Davos knew.

A king and a queen, both heralded by a bleeding star and rising, against all odds and foes, from the flames.

"Don't tell me you believe she will keep her word."

"Targaryens are a treacherous lot," spat Ser Godry. "Like to turn on you, soon as wear flowers in their pretty hair and sing a mournful tune."

"Indeed she may not," Davos agreed. "Still, the truce is well called. She may come to understand you are the only true and rightful king. And we now have valuable information we did not before. Whose words she listens to."

"That bloody Imp," the knight swore. "I'd pay gold for the chance to shove my sword through his ugly face, just for Blackwater."

"I have not forgotten Blackwater," the king growled, his eyes forward. Davos could see the tight clench of his jaw.

 _Dale. Allard. Matthos. Maric. I will never forget you, my sons. My fine, brave sons. But for your brothers and your mother, may I do all that is possible to keep our king strong so that we may one day have peace_.

"He shall have his reckoning, Ser Godry. They all shall. War is a tricky business. This truce will hold so long as she realizes she does need me. I am not so foolish to believe she will remain true with such vipers spitting their poison in her ears. But let her warm-land soldiers freeze and hunger and die. Let the free folk of the north, whose king was among the last to bend knee to the first Aegon, see her black beast steal food from the mouths of their children. Let them learn how the Dothraki ravage, how her army is made of slaves and sell-swords here for plunder." The chill in the winter air was but a morsel against the ice in the king's voice.

"And we shall need to have armorers craft larger, barbed scorpions, more like harpoons. Every post must have them, and heavier, barbed spears. Nets as well. Davos, send word to Eastwatch to see if whaling nets may be found. The dragon is large and fierce and men _will_ die to bring it down, but it is still a mortal creature. Once it is dead, she will have nothing."

"Once... _both_ of her dragons are dead, your grace? She has two, does she not?"

Stannis Baratheon turned to Davos and shook his head. "No, my lord. True, we may have to slay it as well. But she's a poor liar. She doesn't know where it is. She's the mother of a single dragon now, who doesn't even realize Prince Jon has taken one from her. She believes their blood tie is stronger than his bloody _oaths_ and his loyalty to the Starks. And she thinks us fearful." His mouth set in a grim line. "The people here do not love me, but they will love her less. She thinks she has bought a peace, when all she's gotten is time for me to prepare for her treachery...and to find that dragon."

"King Stannis the Dragonslayer, that's a fine name for a book or a song, aye, Lord Davos?" Godry said with a nod and the fearsome grin of a practiced killer.

"It would be preferable to King Stannis the Dragon _Scolder_..." was out of the Hand's mouth before his common sense could grasp it.

The riders behind them suddenly found a need to slow their mounts and strike up a loud conversation about the weather.

"I'll just check with the outriders, then, by-your-leave-your-grace!" Godry declared, putting spurs to his mount and wheeling off.

His king glared at him.

"I apologize, you grace, that was.."

"That was something you should never again mention aloud, Lord Davos."

"No, certainly, I mean, yes, as you will, your grace, never..."

The king ground his teeth. "It was _ill-behaved_."

"True, quite true, your grace. And yet...yet-"

"Yes, what is it?"

"Your grace, you barely moved when it roared at you!" Davos nudged his mount closer to the king. "You're a brave man, aye, but to... _yell_...at such a beast with its great mouth open..."

The king gave a slight sound of disgust. "I require no flattery, my lord of onions. Yes, it is a great monster, but it allows a slip of a girl to ride upon it, and suffers to have itself chained. If it was like to _eat_ me, then it would have, and you would have a new mistress."

"Never, your grace. I am your man only, to the end."

The king nodded, but it was clear he was still thinking of the dragon. "It was sniffing at me like a hound," he muttered. "I felt an absurd desire to thrust my fist at it to get it used to my scent. I should have liked to touch it. But then it hissed and roared and I realized it wasn't like a dog at all. It's a bloody _cat_ with wings and foul breath. The poets and singers left _that_ out of all their warbling."

He shook his head and spurred his mount, leaving Davos in his trail. Even as he followed, the Hand was shaking his own head in disbelief.

Stannis Baratheon snapped at a dragon large enough to bite him in half as he would have to a cat that leapt upon a banquet table. Davos Seaworth knew, deep in his bones, what he must do.

 _I have lied to you, your grace_ , Davos thought. _For I shall mention this **one** more time aloud - to your daughter. Never again should you fear dragons will come and eat you, my sweet princess. Your father will order them to go away and they will find better things to do. King Stannis, Dragon-Scolder will ever keep you safe from harm, as is his duty to you and to all the realm.  
_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I kept Ser Friendzone and Tyrion alive and with her for no better reason than to let Stannis pick on them. 
> 
> But I really wanted to touch on one of the few times Stannis is ever WISTFUL in the books. He did once imagine riding a dragon. 
> 
> And he would be totally bummed to find out they were like cats.


	17. Show v8 - No Greater

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "My head is yours, to do with as you please. But do it yourself, like a king, like a man should. I once told you I'd accept punishment from no lesser man, but there must be some part of you that hasn't bent the knee to that foreign whore and her bloody demon-god. Then you can fling your own daughter onto the flames and listen to her cries and I will never have to see the man I worshipped become a slave to -"

 

"Faithless dog. You dare draw steel upon your king?" Stannis Baratheon snarled, his eyes blazing in the weak lamplight.

"Never," Davos whispered, with a hard swallow. His hand shook and sweat coated every inch of his skin, though he'd not felt warm in weeks. "But my king would not do so foul a thing as murder his own child, an innocent maiden..."

" _Sacrifice_." The word came out between teeth clenched so tight they sounded like the great cracks of ice when slabs would cascade from rocks and trees, or snap below a man's boots.

"Aye, call it what you will. But it's murder, wicked and wrong and my king is a just man." Davos gripped his sword tighter, tasting blood in his mouth. "If you cannot _sacrifice_ me in her stead, still you'll have to kill me before you lay a hand upon Princess Shireen, your _daughter_. Your _heir_!"

"I'll have your head for this."

Davos didn't know what pained him more - the dark and awful sound of his king's voice, half pure fury and half a tortured anguish, or the way his shadowed and weary eyes were wide shock and...hurt.

Stannis whipped his head to one side, as if to shake these conflicting emotions from his face and soul, casting them off like droplets of blood from his sword. When he returned his gaze, his eyes were narrowed and his voice colder. "Or perhaps you should feed her fires as well."

"My head is yours, to do with as you please. But do it _yourself_ , like a _king_ , like a _man_ should. I once told you I'd accept punishment from no lesser man, but there must be some part of you that hasn't bent the knee to that foreign whore and her bloody demon-god. Then you can fling your own daughter onto the flames and listen to her cries and I will never have to see the man I worshiped become a _slave_ to -"

The king drew so quickly Davos barely saw his arm move. A steel arc flickered and glittered, and Davos barely got his own sword down in time to block the cut that would have gutted him from hip to shoulder.

The power in that blow made him stagger back. He'd never crossed swords with his king. Stannis Baratheon dutifully sparred with the arms masters and knights in his service, and had done so since he was a child. He was a fearsome warrior, strong, savage, fast and brutal; and Davos...was not.

At the first clash of steel, his guards plunged into the tent, weapons drawn. "He is mine," Stannis barked, Lightbringer tracing another oily grey trail through the smoky air. Davos countered, brought his own blade up and felt the king's blow shake his arm down to the bone, his tight fingers wrenched nearly out of their sockets in his desperate effort to keep his grip.

Despair flooded his heart.

 _Father_ , _Warrior, guide me, what must I do?_ were his thoughts when he found himself standing by his laden mount, not even thinking of the cold and lonely ride all the way back to Castle Black. No, all he could think of was the _unthinkable_. Every time he started to mount, he would put his leg down and stand there, dumb and useless as a mooring post in a desert. _He is not_...he'd start to think. _He would not_.

 _Not my king. Not my lord, my stubborn, brave, honest and just master_.

Not that hollow-cheeked, gawky young man, wasted from hunger and duty, his own hand tight on the kitchen cleaver. Staring at him with all the hope and anguish of a man who wanted to be assured he was doing rightly, but could never ask. Yet he aimed, struck true, and stayed while the maester tended to those shortened fingers. His lips were so tight, the feathery black shadows of what could not yet rightly be called a beard seemed to pulse. Davos found himself watching his new lord through the haze of strongwine and the maester's care.

Davos had never thought to bend knee to anyone. To give himself to this lonely and awkward Baratheon was madness. But it was a sublime sort of madness, perhaps. As salt and copper filled his mouth and his fingertips were lost, he found himself a new man. The smuggler turned knight.

 _Do you swear to serve me loyally all your days, to give me honest counsel and swift obedience, to defend my rights and my realm against all foes in battles great and small, to protect my people and punish my enemies?_ the king asked him as he knelt. Years after the loss of his fingers, years of doing his duty for and with his lord, lighting candles in the sept in the hope of a son and for the life of Shireen when the greyscale struck. Fighting by his side, enforcing the king's law and justice at sea and against the Greyjoys. Advising him when asked, learning from him always. Bringing his sons into service as well, watching them rise to be men of worth and respect, his Devan a squire, reading, learning the ways of court, even _jousting_!

His sons could be knights. Would be lords.

But that morning he had awakened in his king's dungeon, waiting to die because he had been driven to destroy the woman who brought her filthy fire god and the demonic magic of shadows and blood to Dragonstone. It had been his duty, he thought. She was his king's enemy. She gave him power, aye. But leeched away his honor.

His king pardoned him and _raised him for his honesty_ , and then demanded it of him forever.

"Please, your grace," he pleaded, backed as far as he could go in the tent. "I beg you–" He couldn't even attack, his instincts and training fighting him as earnestly as the king.

Stannis batted away his Hand's weak defense and brought the tip of his sword right up against the layers of fur, felt, chain and leather that guarded his heart. "You beg for your life now?" he demanded.

"No," Davos panted, stepping forward, into that blade, until he could feel it. "My life is yours. Kill me. Take my head. Burn me if you must, _but spare Shireen_. Will you build your kingdom on the blood of your own daughter?" Tears pooled in his eyes.

"Take him," the king growled, lowering his sword. He dropped his gaze away from Davos and stepped back, turning in an almost contemptuous dismissal. His guards started moving.

"Will you spare her, your grace?" Davos demanded, pointing his wavering sword toward the two men coming for him but remaining focused upon his king.

"It is...necessary. But you shall have your wish and follow her, traitor." The king dropped his sword onto the map table, sending troop markers shaking and rolling. He placed both hands on the edge, his head lowered. "Get him out of here."

Davos commended his soul to the Seven and charged at his king.

It was clumsy and his conflicting duties made it worse. The king whirled as his guards shouted warnings, and Davos found his lunge deflected against the king's fine chainmail; it did nothing but slash his cloak. Stannis had his own sword in hand in the next instant and with a formidable backswing smashed against Davos's blade with an explosion of such pain, Davos knew something had broken in his hand. He cried out, wanting to plead again, wanting to beg, wanting to grab his king and _make_ him see reason, or gods-be-damned, yes, _kill_ him, at least send his king to whatever justice awaited him beyond death, far away from that Red Witch and her god, so Shireen could be safe–

He tried again to strike his king, but now there was a man pulling at his arm from behind and he couldn't aim, he couldn't do anything but blindly hack forward...

And Stannis Baratheon effortlessly deflected that attempt and drove his sword through Davos Seaworth's chest.

It felt like massive weight fell upon him. It was too heavy for him to withstand. He staggered back, but stayed somewhat aloft, for the guards had him now, one on each arm. The light in the tent seemed to flicker, orange and yellow, blazing white and scarlet, and his knees buckled. He gasped in a breath and that made the weight heavier.

He saw the dark figure of the king, his gaunt and shadowed face like a painted mask.

"Davos," Stannis Baratheon rasped. "Damn you, damn you!"

"Spare her," Davos whispered. "For the love I bear you, my king."

The king pulled his sword back, and as it drew came free, the blood shimmering along its polished steel pulsed and wavered, then became brighter. The blade reflected the lamps and candles and then absorbed the flickers until miniscule licks of flame birthed along the razor-sharp edges. One of the guards cried out as the tent filled with a furious incandescence that would shame a Dornish noon. And when the tip came free and blood spilled, a palpable heat rose, with a scent of burnt honey and salt.

The king stared at the sword, his eyes wide, and then down at Davos who was gasping, laughing as blood pooled and bubbled at his mouth. The guards bore him to the ground, one of them whispering some sibilant prayer. 

The king thrust the flaming sword into the ground and threw himself onto his knees next to Davos. "Damn you," he forced out, grasping for Davos's hand. "Davos..."

"For the love you bear _me_ , then," Davos whispered. "Spare... _her_..."

"I shall. I swear it."

Davos couldn't speak any more. He tried to breathe, but the no air came, and his heart beat like war drums on a hundred galleys. But he could feel the heat from the sword and a faint smile came to his blood-flecked lips. He died with the king holding his head and hand, and he would have sworn he could feel the warmth there as well.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know I already did a true Lightbringer version. But this one works for me, too.  
> In a horrible, awful way. 
> 
> The show did Davos a disservice as well as Stannis. Davos risked his life saving one of Robert's bastards in defiance of Melisandre and her fires. If he would do that for Edric/Gendry, (and really, especially for Gendry. Edric, at least, he might have known, or at least met before) then of COURSE he would do it for Shireen. Giving her a toy and riding away when it was pretty clear he suspected what was going to happen was...horrible. Davos - book or show version - would not have done that. He would have thrown himself in the way, he would have broken his own vow and attacked Melisandre again, or he would have...done this.

**Author's Note:**

> As I started thinking of alternative endings, I realized they had to be divided into Show versus Books. I'll add tags as I finish more. Not all will be happy. But they sure won't have a pointless sacrifice that doesn't work anyway and an off-screen execution.
> 
> By now, it's easy to see I am including bits that are not "ends" per se. Just variations on how the story could go, in show or book or combination versions.


End file.
